Cindy Sherman

Born in 1954 in Glen Ridge (USA), she lives in New York.

For more than twenty years, Cindy Sherman hasbeen posing questions about the place of the individual and identity in the face of the development of the mass media and culture industries across the press, television, and the cinema. A witness to the progressive globalisation of this phenomenon, she adopts an approach, which involves putting herself in the frame and in play, parodying the stereotypes of popular culture and imagery. Thus we see her continually transforming herself as she takes on the aesthetic of glossy magazines, fashion, advertising, children's literature, the portrait, history, and, most recently, clowns.

A selection of works from this most recent collection are shown for the first time in France in the spaces at the Château d'Eau. This series of luxuriant images depicts figures posing in shimmering disguises before brightly coloured backgrounds. Their expressions range from cheerful innocence to bonhomie, and from concupiscence to pent-up, sometimes sadistic, malice. Behind the clown's mask, Sherman creates strident, grating, vertiginous works which can be read as a metaphor for social relations but also for the supplementary role to which art and the artist are all too often relegated. The party goes on, but we are caught between laughter and fear.