Cary Leibowitz: Museum Show

In 1990, directly after the success of his first solo exhibition at Stux Gallery, New York, Leibowitz spoke with Vince Aletti for The Village Voice, “The defense I’ve always had about my work is that, all right, it might not be like genius stuff and it might not be earth-shattering and it copies a lot of other people, but it’s documentation. This is some guy who grew up in the suburbs in 1963 and he’s gay and he’s making work and a gallery’s showing him.” [2] Since then, Leibowitz has turned his ability to translate his feelings of inadequacy into art. And, the result is “unmistakable work that is the product of a riveting and consistent practice—driven by anxieties, neuroses, and premonitions of difference—that transform self-doubt and social skepticism into something much larger than niche art-world critique: a heartrending and intimate meditation on our inescapable secret doubleness, the lacerating, manipulative and above all debilitating self-aware conscience that lies always beneath, or behind, or just around the corner, with a mocking wink.”[3] By making failure, particularly personal failure, his medium and showing particular preference for the lowbrow, the pathetic, the inexpensive, the throw-away, Leibowitz throws post-modernism’s slick critique of modernism into harsh relief. His palpable disdain for what is popular makes him an artist who has been forever intentionally out of step of the traditional narrative, but it is exactly this otherness that makes him, as critic Robert Atkins wrote, “A Jeff Koons for the rest of us.” [4]

The exhibition features nearly 350 original artworks and multiples from 1987 to the present: paintings, commercially manufactured multiples, works on paper, archival material, and fabric works. In one series of paintings, he professes his love to forty artists with whom his own works find affinity: “I love Andy Warhol . . . I Love Gilbert and George . . . I Love Robert Gober . . . I Love Cady Noland, etc.” In another series, eleven identical pink panels that read, “Stop Copying Me,” are interrupted by a single panel that asks the viewer, “Do These Pants Make Me Look Jewish?” A diptych titled, “Sad Rainbow, Happy Rainbow,” pokes fun at Frank Stella’s frigid masterpieces and imbues them with psychological humor. The exhibition also includes many of Leibowitz’s multiples, mass-produced items that carry on many of the extended narratives that run through Leibowitz’s work. A white porcelain fish-shaped dish reads, “Fucked up homo bar-mitzvah gay boy worries too much about what his mother will wear.” Knit caps with “Fran Drescher Fan Club” emblazoned on the front, foam footballs that read, “Candyass Sissy,” an industrial mesh carpet that reads, “Loser Line Forms Here,” a Marcia Tucker seat cushion, a Cindy Sheehan megaphone, and a miniature baseball bat that reads, “I Want To Love You Butt . . .” are just a few examples. 

Cary Leibowitz: Museum Show is organized by The Contemporary Jewish Museum and is curated by CJM Associate Curator Anastasia James. The exhibition is accompanied by a 256-page fully-illustrated hardcover catalog with contributions by James and Leibowitz, as well as Hilton Als, David Bonetti, Fran Drescher, Glen Helfand, Rhonda Lieberman, and Simon Lince. The exhibition will travel to the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia and the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston. 

Footnotes

[1] INVISIBLE-EXPORTS, “(paintings and belt buckles),” press release, September, 2013. 

[2] Aletti, Vince. “The Schlemiel of Soho,” The Village Voice, October 9, 1990. p. 103. 

[3] INVISIBLE-EXPORTS.  “Nearly 30 Year Old Stuff…” press release, February 2016. 

[4] Atkins, Robert. “New York,” Contemporanea. November 1990, p. 31. 

Cary Leibowitz (b. 1963, New York) also known as “Candyass,” is an American artist whose work has shown in museums and institutions across the globe including The ICA Boston; The Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis; the Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt; The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Whitney Museum, New York; The Jewish Museum, New York; MoMA PS1, New York; The Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis; The Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH; The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA; Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, Germany; White Columns, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art, Philadelphia, PA; Art Metropole, Toronto; Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf; Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn, Germany; Cabinet Gallery, London; The Kitchen NY; Galleri Nicolai Wallner, Copenhagen; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Galerie Claudio Botello, Turin, Italy; List Visual Arts Center, MIT, Cambridge, MA. Leibowitz’s work has been included in the landmark exhibitions Too Jewish? Challenging Traditional Identities at The Jewish Museum in New York; In a Different Light at the University Art Museum, University of California Berkeley; and Bad Girls, New Museum, New York. His work has been reviewed in The New Yorker, Artforum, The New York Times, Frieze Magazine, and Art in America, among others.

Cary Leibowitz: Museum Show is accompanied by a 224-page fully-illustrated hardcover catalog with contributions by James and Leibowitz, as well as Rhonda Lieberman, Hilton Als, Simon Lince, Fran Drescher, David Bonetti, and Glen Helfand. 
 

Cary Leibowitz: Museum Show is organized by The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco.

Lead sponsorship is provided by Gaia Fund. Major sponsorship is provided by Dorothy R. Saxe and Wendy and Richard Yanowitch. Supporting sponsorship is provided by Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery. Additional support is provided by David Agger; Alvin Baum and Robert Holgate; and Michael T. Case and Mark G. Reisbaum.

The Contemporary Jewish Museum’s exhibition program is supported by a grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.