REVIVAL I - XVIIIe siècle

Exhibition co-curated by Laura Gowen and Rachel Cole

Gowen presents REVIVAL I - XVIIIe siècle, the first exhibition in a series which unites over twenty international contemporary artists whose visual language engages with, reimagines, and transforms imagery from the art historical canon. Co-curated by Laura Gowen and New York-based advisor Rachel Cole Sherr, the show explores various stylistic and methodological interventions in relation to eighteenth-century aesthetic traditions. Elegant portraiture, conversation pieces, landscapes and the defining mores, trends and events of the era are revisited via ever-changing modes of representation. REVIVAL I - XVIIIe siècle aspires to capture the eighteenth-century zeitgeist, connecting the past to contemporary work as a mechanism for understanding and informing about the complexities of the present, whilst laying the groundwork for the future.

The Revival exhibitions propose an inquiry into the encounter between art history and the compositional modes of the hyper-present. Revival is a provocation. It summons its audience to contemplate the interplay between history, memory and living expression; between the past and the present; and between various, dynamic modes of genre, composition and performance. Changes in modes of representation have often been linked to political, economic and socio-cultural conditions, or to historical events and catastrophes, creating the demand for collective memory through visual production. The reemergence and appropriation of the past in art historical movements necessarily reflects shifts in power, perspective and ideology. Those shifts become the focal point of the exhibition series. Revival contends that the revisiting of art history in contemporary compositions extends opportunities for pertinent examinations of the present.