Irvine Contemporary presents Image/Fame/Memory, an exhibition of works by four major portrait and documentary photographers, Curtis Knapp, Gerard Malanga, Billy Name, and Kate Simon, who are known for the iconic power of their images in circulating fame and contributing to the cultural memory of the past four decades. Many of the photographs are being exhibited for the first time. Two of the photographers, Billy Name and Kate Simon, have also recently collaborated with Shepard Fairey in the creation of new images that extend the memory and symbolic power of the original photographs in a new medium and new cultural moment. On view through April 16.
This exhibition brings together for the first time the photographs of Curtis Knapp, Gerard Malanga, Billy Name, and Kate Simon, who worked mainly in New York City from the mid-1960s to the present, and have produced important bodies of work centered on portraits and intimate images of well-known musicians, artists, writers, and actors. This exhibition will also be the first exhibition of Shepard Fairey’s collaborative images with the source photographs by Billy Name and Kate Simon.
Fame, celebrity, and memory are inseparable from the photographic image as it circulates in all forms of media. As Madonna herself famously said in her 1991 movie, Truth or Dare, “what’s the point of doing anything off camera?” Most of the people represented in these images are known through many years of conventional celebrity photo genres–magazine spreads, staged promotional shots, and media coverage. The photographs in Image/Fame/Memory were selected to show photographers working in more personal, reflective, candid, and interpretive ways with their subjects, creating images that compel us to reconsider the people known only through multiple streams of photographic imagery.
Irvine Contemporary specializes in contemporary art by early and mid-career artists with growing national and international reputations. We also feature works by a select group of established artists for collectors interested in building collections with art works in every category of interest.
Image: Kate Simon, Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe (1976), 2011. Cibachrome print, 20 x 16 inches. Photo: Courtesy of Irvine Contemporary and the Artist.
Irvine Contemporary
1412 14th St., NW
Washington, DC 20005
202-332-8767
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irvinecontemporary.com
