David Armstrong
This is the first extensive exhibition of work by American photographer David Armstrong (1954-2014). Just under 100 portraits are on show, a selection of landscape images and around 300 contact prints from the 1970s to the early 1990s.
Why this work now?
Firstly, it is a document of its time that exudes beauty. We see a New York that no longer exists. It is New York as an attitude to life, beyond the Empire State Building, the urban canyons and yellow taxis that occur countless times in films, stories, ambitions and advertising. This New York is a promise, and New York as a home for outsiders and the stranded, for artists, poets, musicians and bohemians. Cookie Mueller, writer and actress in John Waters' Pink Flamingos, among other films, immortalised these people in her texts, and Armstrong portrayed many of them, including Mueller herself. They, like him, lived in downtown Manhattan, partied at the legendary Mudd Club and hung out at the beach in Provincetown, Massachusetts. In this exhibition we encounter the actress and gallery owner Patti Astor; artists John Waters, Greer Lankton, Jack Pierson, Tabboo! and Christopher Wool; actor and filmmaker Vincent Gallo; photographer Nan Goldin; curator Klaus Biesenbach; writer Gary Indiana; lawyer and civil rights activist William Kunstler; musicians Philippe Marcade, John and Evan Lurie; model and later Vogue editor Lisa Love; tattoo artist Mark Mahoney; artist and fashion designer Maripol; poet and art critic Rene Ricard; and transgender model Teri Toye.
Armstrong photographed his generation. First in Boston in the 1970s, where he studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and formed a scene with photographers and artists such as Nan Goldin, Mark Morrisroe, Taboo! and Jack Pierson. The earliest black-and-white photographs show young people caught between precocious thoughtfulness and cigarette-smoking rebellion:
"Like it could be anywhere. It's like they are rebelling against their education. They're in art school, but they don't want to be like these distant observers, they want to observe themselves, and their lives, and their friends, and their drugs, and their bars. [鈥 You know, it was about queerness, it was about punk and rebellion, it was about drug dealers, drag bars, HIV, like none of those things were inseparable." (Oral history interview with Lia Gangitano, 2017 February 5-6. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.)
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This is the first extensive exhibition of work by American photographer David Armstrong (1954-2014). Just under 100 portraits are on show, a selection of landscape images and around 300 contact prints from the 1970s to the early 1990s.
Why this work now?
Firstly, it is a document of its time that exudes beauty. We see a New York that no longer exists. It is New York as an attitude to life, beyond the Empire State Building, the urban canyons and yellow taxis that occur countless times in films, stories, ambitions and advertising. This New York is a promise, and New York as a home for outsiders and the stranded, for artists, poets, musicians and bohemians. Cookie Mueller, writer and actress in John Waters' Pink Flamingos, among other films, immortalised these people in her texts, and Armstrong portrayed many of them, including Mueller herself. They, like him, lived in downtown Manhattan, partied at the legendary Mudd Club and hung out at the beach in Provincetown, Massachusetts. In this exhibition we encounter the actress and gallery owner Patti Astor; artists John Waters, Greer Lankton, Jack Pierson, Tabboo! and Christopher Wool; actor and filmmaker Vincent Gallo; photographer Nan Goldin; curator Klaus Biesenbach; writer Gary Indiana; lawyer and civil rights activist William Kunstler; musicians Philippe Marcade, John and Evan Lurie; model and later Vogue editor Lisa Love; tattoo artist Mark Mahoney; artist and fashion designer Maripol; poet and art critic Rene Ricard; and transgender model Teri Toye.
Armstrong photographed his generation. First in Boston in the 1970s, where he studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and formed a scene with photographers and artists such as Nan Goldin, Mark Morrisroe, Taboo! and Jack Pierson. The earliest black-and-white photographs show young people caught between precocious thoughtfulness and cigarette-smoking rebellion:
"Like it could be anywhere. It's like they are rebelling against their education. They're in art school, but they don't want to be like these distant observers, they want to observe themselves, and their lives, and their friends, and their drugs, and their bars. [鈥 You know, it was about queerness, it was about punk and rebellion, it was about drug dealers, drag bars, HIV, like none of those things were inseparable." (Oral history interview with Lia Gangitano, 2017 February 5-6. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.)
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Kunsthalle Z眉rich is delighted to announce new exhibitions by David Armstrong and Ana Jotta.
The first extensive exhibition of American photographer David Armstrong (1954-2014) showcases nearly 100 portraits, a selection of landscape images, and around 300 contact prints from the 1970s to early 1990s.
The works in the show were produced between the 1970s, when Armstrong oscillated between Boston and Provincetown, and the 1980s, when he settled in New York.
