Finding meaning in the familiar with the artwork of Zoe Leonard
A major exhibition of Leonard's work explores the intrigue in the everyday.
[Z]oe Leonard: Survey, currently on display at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art, is the the first major display of the artist’s work on American soil. Leonard is one of the most critically acclaimed artists of her generation, producing works that collectively act as an exploration of the realities of daily life and how the seemingly mundane interacts with politics and social constructs such as gender, sexuality, loss, mourning, migration and displacement.
The themes are both present both in the content of the artist’s work as well as its form. Leonard frequently plays with perspective, context and shifts in scale to challenge the meaning of everyday objects and to invite the viewer to reconsider the objects and media they interact with on a daily basis.
Zoe Leonard: Survey displays about 100 key works by the artist dating since the mid-1980s including Strange Fruit, the artist’s response to the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and early 90s. The piece is composed of orange and banana peels that the artist stitched together. Also on display is You See I Am Here After All, which consists of thousands of vintage postcards depicting the Niagara Falls, examining that landmark’s storied status within the precarious American myth.
See a selection of works from the show below. And follow the Whitney here.
Zoe Leonard, detail of You see I am here after all, 2008. 3,851 vintagepostcards, 11 × 10 1/2 × 147 ft. (3.35 × 3.2 × 44.8 m) overall. Installation view, Dia: Beacon, Beacon, New York, 2008. Collection of the artist; courtesy Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne. Photograph by Bill Jacobson, New York
Zoe Leonard (b. 1961, New York; Lives in New York) Income Tax, Rapid Divorce, 1999 Dye transfer print 20 × 16 in. (50.8 × 40.64 cm) Collection of the artist; courtesy Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne, and Hauser & Wirth, New York
Zoe Leonard, Niagara Falls no.4, 1986/1991.Gelatin silver print, 41 7/8 × 29 1/4 in. (106.36 × 74.3 cm). Collection of the artist; courtesy Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne, and Hauser & Wirth, New York
Zoe Leonard, Untitled, 1989. Gelatin silver print, 9 3/4 × 7 in. (24.77 × 17.78 cm). Collection of the artist; courtesy Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne, and Hauser & Wirth, New York
Zoe Leonard, TV Wheelbarrow, 2001. Dye transfer print, 20 × 16 in. (50.8 × 40.6 cm). Collection of the artist; courtesy Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne, and Hauser & Wirth, New York
Zoe Leonard, The Fae Richards Photo Archive, 1993-96, (detail), 78 gelatin silver prints and 4 chromogenic prints, dimensions variable. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Purchase, with funds from the Contemporary Painting and Sculpture Committee and the Photography Committee