The Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University presents David Shrigley: Life Model II, September 11 – December 11, 2016. The exhibition, curated by Rose Curator Kim Conaty, marks Shrigley’s first solo museum show in New England and the U.S. debut of his Life Model project. An opening reception will be held Saturday, September 10, 2016 from 5-8 PM. The artist will give a public talk on Sunday, September 11 at 1 PM, at Pollack Fine Arts Teaching Center, next to the Rose.

Over the past two decades, British artist David Shrigley has created a diverse body of work distinguished by its sharp wit and light-hearted absurdity, offering a humorous edge to simple depictions of everyday scenarios and human interactions. Drawing lies at the heart of his practice, and many of his works suggest an ongoing inquiry into the very making and presentation of art itself.

Life Model II is the latest iteration in Shrigley’s ongoing Life Model project, his clever take on the academic tradition of life drawing. Sketching from live models—commonly referred to as “life drawing”—has long been considered a rite of passage for artists, believed to be one of the most difficult subjects for a student to master. In Life Model II, Shrigley deftly subverts this mainstay of art school curricula, replacing the live model with a sculptural one—a caricatured likeness of a female figure standing nine-feet tall and slightly out-of-proportion. (The first Life Model was a similarly awkward depiction of a male figure.) The project transforms the gallery into a classroom and viewers into participants. Visitors are invited to use the easels, drawing boards, and assorted implements provided to create their own drawings from Shrigley’s sculpture. When drawings are finished, they are pinned to the surrounding walls, becoming part of the exhibition and blurring conventional lines of authorship.

Explains Conaty, “Shrigley’s work to date has largely derived from imagined scenarios rather than mimetic representation, but the Life Model project exists somewhere in between: the figural sculpture is based on the artist’s sketches of a purely invented female form, but visitors will then draw from that form. The sculpture becomes both artwork and model, a provocation and an incitement to generate new work. For Shrigley, these new drawings are not merely formal exercises but stand as metaphors for viewers’ interpretations of his work.” 

As part of the exhibition, Shrigley will also debut a new series of his own drawings, prompted by his thinking about Life Model II. In collaboration with a hired female model, Shrigley has created an impressive group of pencil drawings, sketched from life and embellished with short phrases or descriptions. Conaty adds, “For the first time since his student days at the Glasgow School of Art, where Shrigley admits having little interest in the requisite life drawing classes, he has put himself before the easel again. The resulting drawings—a counterpoint to the visitor-generated drawings—are characterized by an unexpected humanism and pathos, introspective even as they maintain a darkly humorous edge.” 

Concurrent with Shrigley’s exhibition, the artist’s animated video Start/Finish (2015) will be presented at Rosebud, the Rose Art Museum’s satellite gallery in downtown Waltham. This short tale puts the viewer in the driver’s seat on a comical road journey that inserts humanitarian questions into video game simulation. Start/Finish will be on view September 1 through October 29 at Rosebud (683 Main Street, Waltham; Thursdays and Fridays, 1–4 PM; Saturdays, 10 AM–1 PM).

Also this September, Shrigley has two major public art commissions opening in New York City and London. David Shrigley: MEMORIAL, a new public artwork commissioned by the Public Art Fund for Central Park’s Doris C. Freedman Plaza, will be on view September 8, 2016 – February 26, 2017. Tapping into both the absurd potential and poignant nature of the everyday, the 17-foot-tall granite sculpture rises in front of the southeast entrance to Central Park with a shopping list engraved on its surface. A reference to the civic monuments that dot the park and city, Shrigley’s MEMORIAL celebrates the quotidian in monumental fashion. On September 29, Shrigley’s winning Fourth Plinth Commission will be installed in London’s Trafalgar Square. This second major public commission of the fall is titled Really Good and features a ten-foot-tall bronze “thumbs-up” sculpture.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

David Shrigley (b. 1968, Macclesfield, England) lives and works in Brighton, UK. A Turner Prize nominee in 2013, his recent solo exhibitions include Lose Your Mind, British Council Touring, Guadalajara, Mexico (2016); David Shrigley, Two Rooms Gallery, Auckland Arts Festival, New Zealand (2015); David Shrigley: Life and Life Drawing, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia (2014–15); David Shrigley, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany (2014); Big Shoes, BQ, Berlin, Germany (2013); How Are You Feeling?, Cornerhouse, Manchester, UK (2012–13); Brain Activity, Hayward Gallery, London, England (2012), which toured to Yerba Beuna Centre for the Arts, San Francisco, USA (2013); Drawings, Mumbai Art Rooms, India (2012); Animate, Turku Art Museum, Finland (2011); David Shrigley, Bergen Kunsthall, Norway (2009); BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK (2008); To the Wall: David Shrigley with Lily Van der Stokker, Aspen Art Museum, Colorado, USA (2007); and David Shrigley, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Scotland (2006).

Also on view at the Rose Art Museum, September 11-December 11: Painting Paintings (David Reed) 1975; Sarah Sze: Timekeeper; and Rose Video 09 | Sean Lynch: Adventure: Capital.

ABOUT THE ROSE ART MUSEUM AT BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY 

Founded in 1961, the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University is among the nation’s premier university museums dedicated to collecting, preserving, exhibiting, and interpreting 20th and 21st century art. A center of cultural and intellectual life on campus, the Museum serves as a catalyst for artistic expression, a living textbook for object-based learning, and a site for scholarly innovation and the production of new knowledge through art. American painting of the post-war period and contemporary art are particularly well represented within the Rose’s permanent collection, which is now more than 8,000 objects strong.  

Major paintings by Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Helen Frankenthaler, and Andy Warhol anchor the collection, and recently acquired works by Mark Bradford, Al Loving, Jack Whitten, and Charline von Heyl build upon this strength while reflecting the Museum’s commitment to works of both artistic importance and social relevance. Through its collection, exhibitions, and programs, the Rose works to affirm and advance the values of global diversity, freedom of expression, and social justice that are hallmarks of Brandeis University.

Located on Brandeis University’s campus at 415 South Street, Waltham, MA, the museum is free and open to the public Wednesday through Sunday, 11 AM – 5 PM.

For more information, visit www.brandeis.edu/rose/ or call 781-736-3434.