The exhibition Inspiration – Contemporary Art &amp; Classics, shown on the third floor of the Ateneum Art Museum, explored how international contemporary artists had been inspired by the classics of European art. The exhibition presented art, by the most interesting of contemporary artists, that had drawn inspiration from iconic masterpieces. The works range from revering old masters to questioning art history’s white-male-centric past. 

Featured in the exhibition was Gavin Turk’s Death of Marat (1998), a waxwork of the artist as Jean Paul Marat on his death bed, based on the 1793 painting of the same name by Jacques-Louis David. This was displayed alongside works by Marina Abramović, Jake &amp; Dinos Chapman, Mat Collishaw, Nancy Fouts, Jeff Koons, Wolfe von Lenkiewicz, Heikki Marila, Jarmo Mäkilä, Aurora Reinhard, Jenny Saville, Yinka Shonibare CBE and Koen Vanmechelen. New works were created especially for the exhibition by Mark Karasick, Ola Kolehmainen, Joseph Kosuth and Sara Masüger. The diverse exhibition included paintings, sculptures, installations and video works. 

This exhibition, originally on show at the National Museum in Stockholm in spring 2020, was curated by Susanna Pettersson and James Putnam. At the Ateneum Art Museum, the exhibition was curated by the museum director, Marja Sakari, and the chief curator, Sointu Fritze.

Inspiration – Contemporary Art & Classics

The exhibition Inspiration – Contemporary Art & Classics, shown on the third floor of the Ateneum Art Museum, explored how international contemporary artists had been inspired by the classics of European art. The exhibition presented art, by the most interesting of contemporary artists, that had drawn inspiration from iconic masterpieces. The works range from revering old masters to questioning art history’s white-male-centric past.

Turk's whimsical Eggshibition was one of the first virtual shows held during the pandemic, opening on Easter Monday at the artist's gallery in Canning Town. The artist led an interactive digital tour of his lock-down world, responding to audience questions as he presented his Cosmic Eggs&nbsp;series.

The egg has long been an object of fascination for Turk who explored its symbolism as it relates to spring,&nbsp;fragility, loss of innocence, the beginning of the end, luck or wealth.&nbsp;Within art the egg is a visual shorthand for the surrealism&nbsp;of imagination, new life and un-hatched potential, ushering the next generation.

The ideas of rebirth the egg represents were explored by the artist who has proven himself a master of recycling Art history, materials, identity, value, and ideas through his work. Turk capriciously represents what you already know, reminding&nbsp;you, re-engaging you or causing you to recoil or laugh and smile.

In the uncertainty and isolation of the pandemic, the colourful forms in Turk's Eggshibition&nbsp;offered a space for playfulness and levity as well as for connections and sharing ideas. The virtual show allowed the artist to engage with audience during a period of stark separation, renewing the primary relationship that underpins his work.

Cosmic Egg, 2019, Mixed media on plywood 1502 x 1090 mm

Eggs

Turk's whimsical Eggshibition was one of the first virtual shows held during the pandemic, opening on Easter Monday at the artist's gallery in Canning Town. The artist led an interactive digital tour of his lock-down world, responding to audience questions as he presented his Cosmic Eggs series.

Eggshibition 

With a focus on identity, its construction and forms of its transformation, the exhibition tackles central issues of contemporary art and society. New technologies such as the Internet, gene manipulation and cloning are causing us to ponder more and more on the concept of identity as it relates to subject generation and definition.

The exhibition launches out from Cindy Sherman’s work, which is marked by a consistent and critical – even provocative – challenge to the construction of identities. Her world of images is resourced out of the overwhelming avalanche of images generated by television, films, magazines, the World Wide Web and the history of art. This world is explored by juxtaposing Cindy Sherman’s works and those of contemporary artists and analyses them in regards to topoi such as the deconstruction of the portrait, cultural, gender-specific and sexual stereotypes, and the construction and fiction of identity.

Sherman’s characters reflect our contemporary culture, with its self-made celebrities, reality shows and social-media narcissism. She uses a wide range of scenarios to show that the artificial qualities of such identities, which are often generated in the first place by representation – in film and photography, for instance – lead to an array of identity options, (self-)construed and formed at will, but still determined by social norms. Meanwhile she uses subtle means to question the new possibilities offered to the modern individual for creating him- and herself anew.

The subject of identity, self-image, role-play and sexuality entered art mainly through women artists of the 1960s and 1970s in the course of the women’s liberation movement. A profound upheaval of social norms and cultural certainties shook both society and art in the late 1960s. In the wake of these events the forecasted dissolution of previous norms and categories – for instance of female, male, or queer identities – created scope for the creation of new models remote from previously valid norms.

This process was to a great degree accompanied by the media – as it still is – and is now enabling many artists both female and male to create new models of identity, to address the theme of gender transformation, and to react to social and political challenges. The favoured vehicles of expression came to be the comparatively young media of photography, film and video art.

Cindy Sherman, icon of art history since the 1980s, demonstrated with her first important series&nbsp;Untitled Film Stills&nbsp;(1977–1980) the break between authentic self-portrayal and -enactment by confronting observers with the paradox of a strategy of denial. In this way Sherman inspires subsequent generations to explore the theme of identity and transformation in diverse media, but without ever altering her established artistic procedures.

The primary aim of the exhibition&nbsp;The Cindy Sherman Effect. Identity and Transformation in Contemporary Art&nbsp;is to&nbsp;explore the perspectives Cindy Sherman opened up to subsequent generations through her unmasking strategies. In the games she played in portraying images of society and clichés she created freedoms that exploited subsequent status quos to boost the critical analysis of identity as related to art, society and politics.

Participating artists: Monica Bonvicini • Candice Breitz • Sophie Calle • Samuel Fosso • Douglas Gordon • Martine Guitierrez • Elke Silvia Krystufek • Sarah Lucas • Maleonn • Zanele Muholi • Catherine Opie • Pipilotti Rist • Julian Rosefeldt • Markus Schinwald • Eva Schlegel • Tejal Shah • Cindy Sherman • Fiona Tan • Ryan Trecartin • Wu Tsang • Gavin Turk • Gillian Wearing

En Face Series 

Effect Identität und Transformation in der zeitgenössischen Kunst

With a focus on identity, its construction and forms of its transformation, the exhibition tackles central issues of contemporary art and society. New technologies such as the Internet, gene manipulation and cloning are causing us to ponder more and more on the concept of identity as it relates to subject generation and definition.