Sherrie Levine

Simon Lee Gallery is proud to announce our third solo exhibition of work by Sherrie Levine. Sherrie Levine came to prominence as one of a generation of artists who, during the 1970s and early 1980s, became known under the label of postmodernism. One of the characteristics of her work that drove critics at the time, Craig Owens in particular, to identify it as such was its use of appropriation. In his influential 1980 essay: The Allegorical Impulse: Toward a Theory of Postmodernism, Owens saw Levine’s use of appropriation as a strategy working against the Modernist imperative of originality and artistic genius. Levine’s source materials cross all media, encompassing early modern photography, modernist furniture, book plate reproductions of paintings, sculptures and found and commercially produced objects. The mechanism of appropriation she employs is complex, ranging from direct casting of a sculptural source, through drawing from reproduction to the creation of a...