February 16, 2004
Franz Gertsch at Gagosian Gallery
An Artforum.com review of the Franz Gertsch exhibition now on view at Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea. The link will die two months from now, so here's the full text:
Few painters continually work on the supersize scale of Franz Gertsch; fewer still have a privately financed museum to support and exhibit their work. This show of seven paintings and six equally large-scale prints, now settled in the only Chelsea space in which it would comfortably fit, originated at the Museum Franz Gertsch in Switzerland. Five billboard-size portraits of Patti Smith, painted after photographs Gertsch took at a 1977 performance in Cologne, dominate the show. They depict Smith interacting with unseen fans, reading from a book, and playing guitar, but their ostensible photorealism is belied by Gertsch's sly editing. In Patti Smith I, 1978, Gertsch excised an audience member from the image, leaving us with Smith, her back turned, crouching in communion with her guitar and amps on a stage littered with cables and papers. She is the epitome of the 1970s rock star: sexually ambiguous; long, messy hair; clothes artfully arranged over a too-skinny frame. The work's placement and its size fuse two audiences—the one looking at the painting and the one watching Smith's performance—and the viewer bathes in the aura of her stardom. This is contemporary history painting.