March
28 – April 26, 2014
Opening
reception: Friday, March 28, 2014, 6 – 8pm
524 West 24th Street
New York, NY
From jackshainman.com:
Jack Shainman Gallery is pleased to present Malick Sidibé’s fifth
solo exhibition with the gallery. The show includes vintage prints from the
1960s through the 1980s as well as more recent prints made from negatives as
early as 1963. The exhibition will also feature several rarely seen color
Polaroid photographs. Together the images capture a generation of urban
Malians, or Bamakois, as they came of age in the time of Pan-African
independence and rock and roll.
Sidibé
opened Studio Malick in 1962, five years after buying his first camera. He soon
branched out of the studio to photograph the nightlife and social scene of
Bamako which had become a center for youth culture. Taking us from the beaches
of Mali, to clubs and parties, and back to the studio, Sidibé’s photographs
capture the sense of freedom his young subjects exude. From candid action
scenes to the carefully posed studio portraits of subjects in traditional
clothing or the latest western fashions, Sidibé’s iconic images document the
changing culture of a liberated country.
Mali
gained its independence from France in 1960. At a time when nationalism was at
an elevated height, economic and technological shifts allowed for the spread of
international youth culture bringing James Brown and Easy Rider to a new
generation of Malians. During this period young Bamakois embraced rock and
roll, emulating western styles and distancing themselves from traditional
culture. Manthia Diawara writes, “These photographs are speaking to me now, not
only as important aesthetic documents on the culture of the 1960s, but also as documents
that both problematize the narrow meaning of nationalism extent at that time,
and open the doors to Pan-African and diasporic aesthetics through rock and
roll.”
Malick
Sidibé was born in 1936 in Mali, where he still lives and works. Recent solo exhibitions
include Malick Sidibé: Chemises, The Frances Lehman Loeb Art
Center, Vassar College, 2014;Studio Malick, DePaul University Art
Museum, Chicago, 2012; which traveled to the Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Winter
Park, Florida; Think with the Senses - Feel with the Mind, 52nd
International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennial, 2007; Malick Sidibé:
Chemises, Fotografiemuseum (FOAM), Amsterdam, 2008 and Malick
Sidibé, The Cartier Foundation, Paris, 2004.
Malick
Sidibé was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement Award by the Board
of La Biennale di Venezia in 2007. In 2008 he was the recipient of
International Center of Photography Infinity Award for Lifetime Achievement. He
also was the recipient of the Hasselblad Award in 2003. Sidibé’s work is included
in numerous public collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York, NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; San Francisco Museum of Modern
Art, CA; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Birmingham Museum of Art, AL;
The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; High
Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA and the International Center of Photography, New
York, NY.
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