Lisson Gallery is delighted to announce an exhibition by Jemima Stehli at 27-29
Bell Street.
In this new body of work, Jemima Stehli is an identifiable presence, but far from
creating self-portraiture we see her engaging in a series of ‘performances’ in
which she uses her naked body to challenge notions of desire, narcissism, and
sexuality. Whether or not she is enjoying using her body in this way is
provocatively ambivalent. In Standing Nude (2001/2002) Stehli stages a full-length
nude photograph of herself in the setting of her studio. Holding the remote
shutter release in her left hand, she gazes directly into the camera yet employs a
pose more reminiscent of the classicism of Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, 1485-86.
The coupling of the traditionally formal posture with her command of the
circumstances indicates her complicity in the image building process while
simultaneously subverting our received perceptions of the tractability of feminine
beauty.
Much of Stehli’s work is shot in her studio. The chaos of the interior of the
studio is deliberate and very often apparent in the images she produces,
reaffirming the connection between the artist, the studio and the means of
production. In Mirror no. 1, 2 & 3 (2001) we find the images becoming more
abstract and painterly. Here she uses a mirror at close range to distort and
confuse, at the same time continuing the dialogue between exhibitionism,
scrutiny and pleasure, and maintaining the connection of artist to studio.
Read moreAgain using mirrors, yet moving into the unforgiving space of the gallery, Gallery
1,2 (2003) shows the artist divested of the security of her studio. These images
are more sculptural, severe, and thematically cooler than the others, and Stehli
appears more vulnerable. The works are shown in the space where they were
actually made and are the only photographs in the exhibition not taken in her
studio.
In the mm, (2003) works, Stehli takes the idea of photograph as painting one
step further. Inspired by Bert Stern’s photographs of Marilyn Monroe taken
shortly before her death, Stehli playfully manipulates a red scarf as a prop to
obscure her naked body while using mirrors to create images of varying degrees
of abstraction. The variety of colour and tone in this series ignores the
convention of consistency usually employed when printing a photographic series,
and highlights the formal emphasis of the work. These works make apparent the
tensions that have always existed in Stehli’s practice between sculpture,
photography, performance and painting - a fascinating play on media and our
expectations.
Jemima Stehli has had solo exhibitions at ARTRA, Milan (2001), Chisenhale
Gallery (2000); Artlab, Imperial College, London (2000). Group exhibitions
include: ‘Hilary Lloyd, Jemima Stehli, Brian Dawn Chalkley’, City Racing London
(1998), ‘A Shot in the Head’, Lisson Gallery, London (2000), ‘City Racing 1988-
1998: a partial account’ I.C.A. London, (2001); ‘Gymnasion’, Palais Thurm and
Taxis, Bregenz, Austria (2001) ‘Face Off’, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge (2002); ‘Body
Politics’, Elga Wimmer Gallery, New York, NY (2003). Upcoming solo
exhibitions include Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada, and the
Jeffrey Charles Gallery, London. Recently published by ARTicle Press, a
monograph ‘Jemima Stehli’.
