To mark 40th anniversary of the beginning of the AIDS pandemic, when the CDC published the first scientific acknowledgement of what we know now as HIV/AIDS in 1981, David Zwirner gallery will host a series of exhibitions over the next few months. Under the title “More Life,” it will spotlight the work of artists who died of AIDS-related causes. Many of these artists have rarely been the subject of major surveys.
“Forty years is a long time—to look back and start to sift through things,” the gallery’s senior director Robert Goff, who is organizing the series with director Thor Shannon and associate director Alec Smyth, told ARTnews in an interview. “Even though a lot of these are tragic stories in the fact that these artists are no longer with us—their lives were cut short and we can’t know what they would have done—it’s a positive thing. There’s something affirming and life giving.”
In September, four more exhibitions will be staged. Three of them will be in New York—there will be solo shows there devoted to Ching Ho Cheng, curated by independent curator Simon Wu; Frank Moore, curated by writer Hilton Als; and Jesse Murry, curated by critic Jarrett Earnest and artist Lisa Yuskavage. And in London, there will be a survey of work by Hugh Steers curated by actor and collector Russell Tovey. Throughout the series’ five-month run, Zwirner will stage a series of roundtable panels with figures like artists Wolfgang Tillmans, Gregg Borodwitz, and Finkelstein, as well as AIDS historians Ted Kerr, Sarah Schulman, and Pamela Sneed.
...
Read full article at artnews.com.
