Suzy Lake - On Stage - prolongation - Exhibitionmfc-michèle didier | Paris - Brussels - PARIS

This Fall, mfc-michèle didier is pleased to present a solo exhibition of the American-Canadian artist Suzy Lake.

Major works by the artist will also be featured in our booth for the first edition of Paris+ par Art Basel.
 
Bringing together historical works from the 70s punctuated by works of a later periods, this exhibition will attest to the growing critical and institutional attention paid to the artist's work, such as MoMA, the Metropolitan, Sammlung Verbund or the CNAP, which recently acquired an important work entitled Imitation of Myself #2.
 
Socially and politically engaged, Suzy Lake's work questions representations in doubt, confronting stereotypes and cultural assumptions with its relationship to the world. Bringing together a selection of masterpieces and focused works, most of which have never been shown in Europe, this exhibition will put into perspective a poetically politicized and sensitive body of works produced over nearly fifty years.
 
Born Suzanne Marx in 1947 in Detroit, USA, Suzy Lake emigrated to Canada in 1968. It was in a political climate that followed the violent racial riots of 1967 in Detroit - also known as the 12th Street riot - the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968, and in the very particular context of the Vietnam War, which led many American citizens to flee the United States to escape general army mobilization, that Suzy Lake left her native country. From 1970 onwards, she took part in the Montreal art scene, notably as co-founder of the Artist Run Space Véhicule Art Inc. with guest artists such as Sol Lewitt, Alison Knowles, Les Levine, General Idea, Roberto Longo and Bill Viola. Concurrently, she produced works, whose influence and politicization were to be decisive for many artists such as Cindy Sherman.
 
Initially, performance was used to avoid tropes of Lake's traditional training wherein she learned to recontextualize the use of formal and perceptual elements as strategies to orchestrate her conceptual concepts. Her work begins with questions regarding representation and perception of the self as a free and responsible being, through photographic sequences and films. The photographic medium is effectively used for its documentary but also critical capacity, confronted with the popular, advertising and commercial imagery then in full rise in North American society. These impositions of consumerism and youth culture prompted Lake's work of the 90s to engage in addressing the body through ageism and a different beauty.

«Transform the world», said Marx. «Change life», said Rimbaud. These two watchwords seem to be one and the same for Suzy Lake.

Her works are in the collections of MoMA (NY), Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY), Albright Knox Gallery (Buffalo), National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), Sammlung Verbund (Vienna), Cnap (Paris).

The exhibition is supported by The Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris.
Special thanks to Georgia Scherman.