Disparities & Deformations Our Grotesque

Historically speaking, "grotesque" first referred to the bizarre motifs discovered in Nero's palaces in the 15th century--strange hybridities of plant, animal, and human forms. Such whimsies became fodder for Renaissance masters and later for Baroque, Rococo, Romantic, modern, and postmodern artists. For the Site Sante Fe Fifth International Biennial Exhibition, invited curator Robert Storr examines contemporary embodiments of the grotesque tradition in art, a spirit which unites formal opposites: emotional and intellectual conflicts, beauty and ugliness, delight and delirium, tragedy and comedy. Producing an art of revelatory impurities that encompasses both the wondrous and the disturbing, the grotesque has informed many of the key postmodern movements in art and culture. The Biennial brings together internationally known artists working in a wide range of media, subject matter, and conceptual and aesthetic approaches, including Louise Bourgeois, Bruce Conner, Inka Essenhigh, Tom Friedman, Ellen Gallagher, Robert Gober, Douglas Gordon, Paul McCarthy, Sigmar Polke, Susan Rothenberg, Jenny Saville, Cindy Sherman, and Kara Walker.

Adriana Varejao was born in 1964. Her works have been included in the 1998 Sao Paulo Biennial, the 1995 Johannesburg Biennial, and the first Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art in 1999. She has also exhibited work at the Victoria Miro Gallery, London, and the Lehmann Maupin gallery in New York, among many others.

Born in 1911 in Paris, Louise Bourgeoiswas raised in a household that famously included her father's mistress, who was also Louise's nanny. She studied philosophy and mathematics before turning to art in 1934, and over the next few years studied at various art academies and in the atelier of Fernand Leger, among others. She moved to New York in 1938 with her new husband, American art historian Robert Goldwater. Her first U.S. showing was in a print exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, and over the next 50 years, she exhibited consistently in solo and group shows. In 1982, Bourgeois was the subject of the first retrospective ever given to a woman artist at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and her work has remained in the spotlight ever since.

Tom Friedman was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1965. His work was the subject of a traveling solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York. He has also had exhibitions many times in Japan and Europe.

Ellen Gallagher was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and educated at Oberlin College and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. She has had solo exhibitions at the Gagosian Gallery in New York and Anthony D'Offay Gallery in London. Her work has been reviewed in major art and general-interest publications throughout the world, including Artforum, W, the New York Times, and many others, and is in major public collections nationwide. She lives and works in New York City and Provincetown, Massachussetts.

Robert Gober began exhibiting his work in 1979. Since then he has had numerous exhibitions, both in the United States and abroad. He represented the United States at the Venice Biennale in 2001, and his work has been the subject of one-person museum exhibitions at such institutions as the Dia Center for the Arts, New York; the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris; the Museum of the Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He lives and works in New York City.