This publication
brings together the 50 unique life-cast portraits of the artist's work, Imagines; inspired by ancient Roman life-casts of the same name. Each life-cast portrait is presented as a postcard; the reverse of which, written in Edmier's own hand, provides interesting details about the individual casts. The set of postcards is presented in a hard-back “stone” box-envelop, with white debossed text.
Stemming from his years in Hollywood working as a special effects make-up artist, Edmier's cast portraits connect in intimate ways: they portray the artist's family, friends, heroes, and influences. The connection to Hollywood turns the permanence and memorial of the life mask into a starting point for the transformation to come. Michael Jackson—becomes a teenage werewolf, Jeff Goldblum—The Fly, David Bowie—a New Wave vampire, and Matthew Barney—a well-groomed Satyr. As in all of Edmier's work, one can find familiar identities and structures reshaped and transformed.
Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at Petzel Gallery, New York, from September 6 to November 4, 2017.
Also available in a
limited edition.
American
sculptor Keith Edmier (born 1967 in Chicago, lives and works in New York) received his B.F.A. in 1986 from the California Institute of the Arts. With a background in special-effects makeup and film, Edmier went on to become influenced by neo-
conceptualist and
appropriation art during his time at California Institue of the Arts. Using many different mediums, Edmier blends pop culture and
autobiographical references, recreating his personal history in an uncanny way with the simultaneous nostalgia and
humor of his present perspective.
Edmier has shown his work internationally at many galleries and institutions. He has had solo exhibitions at the the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem, The Netherlands (2013), the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh (2003), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2002, The University at Albany Art Museum (2008), CCS Bard College (2007) in New York, and at Neugerriemschneider Gallery in Berlin (2000).
His work was featured in the 2002 Whitney Biennial in New York, and in group exhibitions at the Sculpture Center in New York (2013), the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (2012), Kunstwerke in Berlin (2007), Tate Modern in London (2007) and Tate Liverpool (2005), Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome (2007), and Kunsthalle Vienna (2004) and Migros Museum in Zurich (2004), and is in the collections of such major museums as the Tate Gallery, London; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Israel Museum.
He is the recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation 2001 Biennial Award.
