Catherine Opie: Genre/Gender/Portraiture Catherine Opie

MASP PRESENTS CATHERINE OPIE –

AVANT-GARDE ARTIST ON MATTERS OF GENDER  

The US artist will have her first solo show in Brazil and exhibit her portraits on MASP’s iconic crystal easels in dialogue with works from the museum’s collection

July 5 to October 27, 2024

From July 5 to October 27, 2024, MASP - Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand presents the exhibition Catherine Opie: Genre/Gender/Portraiture, featuring works by one of the leading names in contemporary international photography. Catherine Opie (Sandusky, Ohio, USA, 1961) was one of the forerunners in the discussion of gender between the late 1980s and early 1990s. Her work dialogues with the tradition of portraiture – one of the most traditional genres in Western painting – so as to give legitimacy to new bodies, subjectivities and experiences that emerge in contemporary society. In her photographs, Opie portrays various expressions and subjectivities of individuals and collectives who identify with multiple genders and sexual orientations, especially queer people.

Curated by Adriano Pedrosa, artistic director at MASP, and Guilherme Giufrida, assistant curator at MASP, the show is the artist’s first in Brazil and features 63 photographs from her most emblematic series, developed over more than three decades. Opie’s portraits appear alongside 21 important paintings from MASP’s collection, including those by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Hans Holbein, Anthony van Dyck and Van Gogh. The works are presented together with the aim of emphasizing the dialogues, tensions and reformulations that Opie’s work proposes, as well as highlighting her predilection for figurative art, a hallmark of the museum’s collection.

The artist explores the classic genre of portraiture by adopting some of its characteristics – a neutral background, hand gestures, expressions and framing – and by adding new elements, such as gender diversity, sexual practices, diverse bodies and homosexual family relationships. “It is essential that all human beings be legitimized, that is necessary for the inclusion of all people, for humanity. By utilizing the traditional aesthetic of the portrait, according to my vision of portraiture, I try to keep the viewer involved as they observe the work. It’s also a way of redefining the queer body within a known formality, and not just as a documentary photograph,” says Catherine Opie.

WORKS AND REFERENCES

One of the photographer’s main references is the painter Hans Holbein (1497-1534), drawing inspiration from the formal elements that make up the German painter’s portraits, such as the use of flat color in the background, especially blue. Their productions are also similar in that they are portraits that bear a sense of community. In Holbein, this recurrence reaffirms ancestry or family alliance. In Opie, the connections are sustained by friendship, identification and protection, as in a gallery of portraits of a kind of queer nobility. In the exhibition, Opie’s photograph JD from the series Girlfriends (Color) (2008) is presented alongside Holbein’s painting The Poet Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (Circa 1542), which highlights their similarities and particularities. “It’s about appropriating tradition and markers associated with the elite to give the same visibility to genders that have often not been part of the possibilities of representation,” says Giufrida.

Being and Having (1991) was Opie’s first series of portraits presented in a solo exhibition. The series consists of 13 photographs depicting performances by figures masculinized by attributes such as moustaches or hats, the so-called drag kings. Instead of the official name of the person portrayed, Opie opts for a fictitious name, one that is collectively and affectively identified within her group of friends. The title is a parody of Jacques Lacan’s (1901-1981) theories on the role of the phallus in the construction of sexuality.

This series inaugurated a series of studio portraits by Opie that continues to this day, some of which have internal references, such as the red background color, the clothes, the pose and the stool that are deliberately repeated in Pig Pen (1993) and Elliot Page (2022), for example. The photograph of Canadian actor, producer and director Elliot Page, known for successful productions such as the film Juno, illustrates the cover of his biography Pageboy, which tells the story of his gender transition process.

ABOUT CATHERINE OPIE

Catherine Opie was born in Sandusky, Ohio, in 1961. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles, where she was also a professor in the Arts Department at the University of California (UCLA). Since the late 1980s, she has had several solo exhibitions at internationally renowned institutions such as the Guggenheim Museum (New York), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles), Regen Projects (Los Angeles), Thomas Dane Gallery (London) and the Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston and Canada). Her work is included in the collections of international institutions such as the Guggenheim Museum, Institute of Contemporary Art, J. Paul Getty Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Fine Arts, National Portrait Gallery, Tate and Whitney Museum.

Catherine Opie: the gender of portraiture is part of MASP’s annual program dedicated to Histories of LGBTQIA+ Diversity. This year’s program also includes exhibitions by Gran Fury, Francis Bacon, Mário de Andrade, MASP Renner, Lia D Castro, Leonilson, Serigrafistas Queer and the large group show Histories of LGBTQIA+ Diversity.

ACCESSIBILITY

All of MASP’s temporary exhibitions have accessibility features, with free admission for people with disabilities and their companions. Visits are offered in Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) or descriptive language; texts and subtitles are available in enlarged font and audiovisual productions in an easy language, with narration, subtitling and interpretation in Libras that describe and comment on the spaces and works. The content can be used by people with disabilities, school groups, teachers, illiterate people and other interested parties, and is available on the museum’s website and YouTube channel.

CATALOGUE

On the occasion of the exhibition, two catalogues will be published, in English and Portuguese, composed of images and commissioned essays by authors who are fundamental to the study of Catherine Opie’s work. The publication is organized by Adriano Pedrosa and Guilherme Giufrida, and includes texts by Ashton Cooper, David Joselit, Guilherme Giufrida, Jack Halberstam and Vi Grunvald. The exhibition catalogue was designed by Estúdio Permitido and comes in a hardcover edition.

SERVICE INFO

Catherine Opie: the gender of portraiture 

Curated by Adriano Pedrosa, artistic director, MASP, and Guilherme Giufrida, assistant curator, MASP

2nd basement floor

On view: July 5, 2024 – October 27, 2024

MASP – Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand

Avenida Paulista, 1578 – Bela Vista

01310-200 São Paulo, SP

Phone: +55 (11) 3149-5959

Hours: Free on Tuesdays and first Thursday of the month; Tuesdays from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. (admission until 7 p.m.); Wednesday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (admission until 5 p.m.); closed on Mondays.

Online booking required via masp.org.br/ingressos

Tickets: R$ 70 (general admission); R$ 35 (seniors and students with ID)

PRESS CONTACT

imprensa@masp.org.br