Louis V E.S.P. presents an exhibition of photographs by Warren Neidich.

In 1986 the artist Warren Neidich, then acting as American Editor of the Belgian photography magazine Cliché visited Cindy Sherman in her studio at 51 Walker Street. The banal photographs exhibited at Louis V E.S.P were the result of this meeting. Cindy Sherman is seen without the equipment of her trade. She is without make up and with out costume. She is unmasked. She is in between acts and as such the seven photographs shot from this encounter are more about her state of readiness then her state of being. They capture her desire to be invisible in front of the camera of the other, to be something else besides that which we have become familiar with. What we know of her. What her self- portraits depict; the female impersonator of the feminized persona of the filmic still. These portraits are then contradictions to the self-portraits. They are in the Lacanian sense of the Object a, the image of lack.

Warren Neidich: Getting back to past work, could you talk about how performance art affected you?

Cindy Sherman: Performance art was one of the big influences on my art, especially in my earlier school years. I was very influenced by seeing Vito Acconci. You know, He did a performance up in Buffalo where I was going to school, and there were a lot of people like Chris Burden whose performance art I found much more interesting then their static work. When I am working, I think I get more out of my art by making the work than I do by see it…. I used to not think that I was really an actress, because that would be sort of like admitting that I didn’t think I could be a real actress so I have to make excuses to act. But in a way, I am starting to think that its really what I would like to do mostly in my art.

Warren Neidich, 51 Walker Street, An Interview with Cindy Sherman, Cliché Magazine #31, November, 1986, pages 48-51

Warren Neidich is an artist and writer living between Berlin and Los Angeles whose work has been exhibited internationally. He is the recipient of the Vilem Flusser Theory Award, 2010. Selected future exhibitions 2010 include Bringing Up Knowledge, MUSAC, Leon, Spain, Kunsthalle Athens, Athens, Greece, Book Exchange, Glenn Horowitz, East Hampton,New York, Circuit, Center For Contemporary Art Lausanne, Switzerland, Hidden Publics, Kunsthalle Palazzo, Liestal, Switzerland, Love Letter for a Surrogate, Torrence Art MuseumTorrence, CA., UKS-Unge Kunstneres Samfund/Young Artist Society, Oslo, Norway and Gallery Moriarty, Madrid, Spain. His recent monograph of drawings entitled Lost Between the Extensivity/Intensivity Exchange was recently published by Onomatopee, Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Cognitive Architecture: From Biopower to Noo-power is forthcoming and will launch at this years Venice Biennial for Architecture at the Dutch Pavilion. He is currently Visiting Scholar and Artist in Residence at the TU Delft School of Architecture, Delft, The Netherlands.