Lehmann Maupin is pleased to announce the opening of a group show entitled The Crystal Stopper curated by Carlos Basualdo. The show includes the work of Teresita Fernández, Félix González-Torres, Dan Graham, Quisqueya Henríquez & Consuelo Castañeda, Alfredo Jaar, Sophie Tottie, and Dolores Zinny & Juan Maidagan. Weekly screenings on Thursday evenings of the film The Mirror by Andrei Tarkovsky will also be part of this exhibition.
The Crystal Stopper show was formed around the theme of the mirror and its place in contemporary identity formation. The mirror is a reflective surface which provides one with one’s own image, and this reflected portrait serves as the model in identity formation. In this exhibition, the image is taken out of the mirror so that instead of one’s self the mirror reflects the surrounding world.
The artists included in The Crystal Stopper work towards an expansion of the traditional model of reflection and self-image. The show was not brought together using a linear chronology, rather it has been curated to trace a series of influences beyond nationality, age and gender. Also, many of the pieces included have been commissioned and conceived specifically for Lehmann Maupin. In this way, the work functions as an empty mirror of the gallery itself or turns the gallery into a kind of mirror whose central image has been removed creating a dialogue between the gallery space, the work and the public or a garden of mirrors.
Carlos Basualdo is a poet and independent curator. He is a regular contributor to Artforum and a senior editor at TRANS>arts.cultures.media. In the spring of 1996, he organized the first exhibition of the work of Cindy Sherman in Brazil at the Museum of Modern Art São Paulo. He is now working on a retrospective of the work of Tunga which is coproduced by Bard College and the Museum of Contemporary Art Miami.