Chuck Close: Family and Others

About

The exhibition will feature seven large-scale paintings: five members of the artist's family, a self-portrait and a portrait of President Bill Clinton. Close has always refused commissions, preferring instead to choose his subjects, especially from among his friends or family members. Taking three or four months to paint, these methodical depictions of the unique visual structure of each face are vivid collisions of rigorous study, intimacy and abstraction.

The exhibition will also feature eight tapestries made on modern Jacquard looms. Based on Close's daguerreotypes of artist friends ' Cindy Sherman, Kiki Smith and Andres Serrano among them ' the tapestries transfer the photographic space of the original, with its shallow depth of field and sharp detail, into the weft and woof of a tapestry. The resulting portraits are at once intimate and, with their enormous, looming presence, monumental. Finally, Close has also taken a series of daguerreotypes of the model Kate Moss that will also be exhibited.

Chuck Close has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions internationally, including a retrospective at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (1980) that also travelled to four venues including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Close has also participated in other major exhibitions such as Documenta V and VI (1972 and 1977) and the Carnegie International (1995). In 1998, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, organized a retrospective that travelled to four venues closing at the Hayward gallery, London (1999). 'Chuck Close Prints: Process and Collaboration' travelled to several venues including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2004), 'Chuck Close: Self Portraits 1967-2005' (2005) opened at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis and travelled to SF MOMA (2006), High Museum, Atlanta (2006) and Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY (2006). A painting retrospective 'Chuck Close Paintings: 1968 / 2006', opened at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid (February 2007) and then travelled to the Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst in Aachen, Germany (May 2007).