25 November – 04 February 2022

Opening reception: Thursday, November 24, 6–8:30pm

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16, rue du Simplon, 1207 Geneva, Switzerland ↗

Sébastien Bertrand is pleased to present two shows by two institutional artists: photographer Richard Kern (1954, USA) and painter Walter Robinson (1950, USA). It is Kern’s fourth show at the gallery and Robinson’s third. This “double feature” – two exhibitions for the price of one, as it were – opens a dialogue between two major contributors to the New York art scene, who both explore the dimensions of fetishism, power, and sexual desire through a series of portraits representative of their respective body of work.

Richard Kern first came to prominence as part of the cultural explosion in the East Village, New York, in the 1980s with erotic and experimental films. He was deeply interested in the aesthetics of extreme sex, violence, and perversion. It is, however, the photographic image imbued with a provocative spirit that became emblematic of his art. The show features a selection of shots from the early 1990s of women holding guns. Two large unique black and white prints are presented alongside a series of five colored photos.

Notorious attributes of daring erotic fantasies, firearms titillate as much as they intimidate. In constructed and studied poses, the models do not seem to be caught by surprise. Either looking directly at the camera or feigning indifference, they are very aware of being photographed and seem to be yearning to appear. Far from being ingenues, Kern’s models seem to own their sexuality, balancing the power scales between themselves and the viewer. 

A prolific painter and well-known art critic, Walter Robinson is considered a pioneer of the Picture Generation. In his practice, he explores the mechanisms of desire, from materialistic to paradigmatic, through image appropriation. The show features a collection of new works from his Romance series, which typically comprises portraits of women or embracing couples with dramatic cliché expressions, crime scenes or, in this case, doctors and nurses. This medical ensemble includes six paintings of identical format, but each standing independently. From the post-war-looking nurse to the sparky Instagram model and the horror movie character clutching a bloody heart, each holds its own aesthetics and narrative.