Taking its title from Lou Reed’s 1972 album, the exhibition "Transformer: Aspects of Travesty" organised in 1974 at the Kunstmuseum Lucerne, Switzerland, and curated by Jean-Christophe Ammann, entered history for being among the first ones to explore the relationship between art, society, glam-rock and transvestism. A new version of that same event was re-launched last week at the Richard Saltoun Gallery in London.
The event includes sexually explicit content and works from all the lesser-known artists included in the original exhibition - Luciano Castelli, Jürgen Klauke, Urs Lüthi, Pierre Molinier, Tony Morgan, Luigi Ontani, Walter Pfeiffer, Katarina Sieverding and Werner Alex Meyer (alias Alex Silber).
Rather than a mere commemoration, the new exhibition is a sort of reunion, a way to allow a new and younger audience to rediscover these artists and analyse themes and topics like sexual self-reflection in art.
When "Transformer" first opened in Switzerland, it immediately became influential for the way it explored complex themes of transvestism and the politics and aesthetics of transgressing identity. At the time the exhibition also toured Germany and Austria, and, in more recent years, the event was referenced in further cultural and art exhibitions all over the world.
This re-proposition of the original exhibition has still got the power to shock and enthral the senses: portraits of Luciano Castelli, co-founder with Salomé of punk bank Geile Tiere (Horny Creatures) in the '80s, remain even in our days mesmerisingly controversial; Sieverding's abstract self-portraits, close-ups and superimpositions of male and female portrait photographs employed as a response to the feminist debates of the period, try to subvert and confuse distinctions between genders and assume a new meaning in our age in which boundaries between the sexes are often blurred; Urs Lüthi's photographs tackle the process of personality dissolving in a visually dynamic style, while Walter Pfeiffer's portraits of a young Warholesque cast of handsome young men question and subvert sexual codes.
Even 40 years later "Transformer" still provides us with visually alternative definitions of identity, sex and desire.
Transformer: Aspects of Travesty is at Richard Saltoun Gallery, 111 Great Titchfield Street, London W1W 6RY, until 14 February 2014.
Image credits for this post
1. Katharina Sieverding
Transformer IV/3, 1973/74
C-Print, Acrylic, Steel
190 x 125 cm © The Artist, VG Bild-Kunst. Photo: Klaus Mettig, VG Bild-Kunst. Courtesy Richard Saltoun Gallery.
2. Katharina Sieverding
Transformer X A/B, 1973/74
C-Print, Acrylic, Steel (2 parts)
190x125 cm each
© The Artist, VG Bild-Kunst. Photo: Klaus Mettig, VG Bild-Kunst. Courtesy Richard Saltoun Gallery.
3. Pierre Molinier
Portrait of Luciano Castelli, 1974
Vintage silver print. 16.5 x 11.4 cm © The Artist. Courtesy Richard Saltoun Gallery.
4. Urs Lüthi
My face behind Eckis Face, 1974
Black and white offset print. 64.9 x 49.3 cm © The Artist. Courtesy Richard Saltoun Gallery.
5. Walter Pfeiffer
Untitled, 1973
Black and white gelatin-silver print. 11 x 15.7 cm © The Artist. Courtesy Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland.
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