“A Portrait of a Generation”

“A Portrait of a Generation” displays over one hundred and fifty portraits of artists by artists, the majority whom are currently practicing in New York. Each participant was paired with another and instructed to create an image of his or her respective partner; the resulting works are hung salon style across the walls of the gallery, effectively compelling the viewer to search for the corresponding works based on the visual dialogue the artists’ relationships occasioned. The exhibition hence explores the intimacy that results from creative partnership.

Often, the coupled artists collaborated, creating works that merged their respective aesthetics into a shared style. Take Jim Drain and Naomi Fisher, who painted each other’s bodies in a rainbow of colors and then photographed each other in a garden. Likewise, Jeremy Kost’s portrait of Sharon Needles features multiple Polaroid photographs of the artist overlaid to create three reconstructed figures, where her portrait of him is made of overlapped dollar bills. Such works seem intimately in tune with each other—as if the artists were mining not only their partners’ aesthetics but their thoughts as well. It’s common to refer to a “scene,” but one rarely sees the contours of a group of contemporary artists delineated so deliberately.