General idea
S/HE, 1976
Silver gelatin prints, 10 elements
78,7 x 61 cm (31 x 24 1/8 in) each (unframed)
79,5 x 63 cm (31 1/4 x 24 3/4 in) each (framed)
Edition of 2 plus 1 artist's proof

On the occasion of Frieze New York 2021 (May 5–9) and our solo presentation with General Idea in collaboration with Mitchell-Innes & Nash we are pleased to present General Idea's S/HE as part of our Spotlight series.

Playing with gender, the two groups of five black-and-white photographs show two models, one male, one female, both professional fashion models from General Idea’s circle of friends. Each model illustrates five roles more usually assigned as male or female: Celebrity, Architect, Muse, Olympian, and Empress.

The postures or silhouettes are lifted from the relentlessly optimistic 1950s advertising in Fortune Magazine, when European postwar reconstruction and North American corporate expansion both were positioned as aspirational and heroic, as Progress: the images hark back to a time when the female image was used to portray the muse, the future, peace or prosperity, while the image of the male (often in trios, by the way) portrayed the architects of that shining future as athletes, industrialists or politicians.

By 1976, that picturing was suspect: Progress was banished and post-modernism replaced it. In the artists’ captions—every advertising image has to have a text—General Idea makes the gender drag explicit, using their typical arch phrase-craft; each photo is accompanied by a list of probing questions whose lingo springs in equal measure from Polari (the gay and drag sub-cultural coded vernacular of the 1950s) and fashion ad-copy, but is of course entirely General Idea’s cunning creation. By transposing and cross-pollinating the dubiously gendered images and texts, they produce two sets of muddled role play, in which male and female are interchangeable. Much as a man can be the ideal of supple beauty, so a woman can be the conquering hero.


Exhibition history:
General Idea Photographs (1969-1982), MAMCO, Geneva (May 31, 2017 – February 4, 2018)
Is Toronto Burning? 1977|1978|1979. Three Years in the Making (and Unmaking) of the Toronto Art Scene, Art Gallery of York University, Toronto (September 17 – December 7, 2014)
S/HE, St. Lawrence College Art Gallery, Kingston (November 7–18, 1977)
Artists and Models, Carmen Lamanna Gallery, Toronto (January 8–27, 1977)

“What are you making him do? Well, what can you really expect? What’re these cues and expectations he’s tossing back to affect?

He’s found them out and acted them out. hand-to-mouth-to-mike-to-you. He’s presumed (and he’s right) that he’s consumed. He did it all for you.”

Watch now – Co-founder of General Idea, AA Bronson introduces the 2017 exhibition
General Idea: Photographs (1969–1982) at MAMCO, Geneva, which included S/HE, 1976.

Frieze New York
Online Viewing Room
May 5 – May 14, 2021
www.frieze.com


From May 5 through May 14, visit our Frieze New York Online Viewing Room where we present, together with Mitchell-Innes & Nash, works by General Idea.

If you wish to receive a dossier, or should you have any questions about our presentation at Frieze New York, please contact Marek Obara: obara@estherschipper.com