The Burchfield-Penney Art Center is pleased to present The Unseen Cindy Sherman: Early Transformations (1975-76), a touring exhibition from the Montclair Museum of Art in Montclair, New Jersey, on view at the Burchfield-Penney from October 23, 2004 – January 16, 2005 and Cindy Sherman: Western New York Collections, on view from October 23, 2004 – January 9, 2005. Both exhibitions begin with an opening reception on Friday, October 22, 2004 from 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.



The Unseen Cindy Sherman: Early Transformations (1975-76) brings together a previously unknown selection of works by leading contemporary artist Cindy Sherman. Culled from family collections, these works comprise early photographs and montages created when the artist was student at Buffalo State College during the mid 1970s, providing the foundation for her emergence as one of the most important artists of her generation. Using herself as the subject of her staged photographs, Sherman explores the myriad constructions of female identity and the body in our popular culture.



“Virtually unknown are a group of early photographic works of 1975-1976, completed when Sherman was a student at Buffalo State College and soon thereafter, with which the artist had already begun to confront the variety of ways in which women and even men are depicted in America's mass media, image saturated society,” writes Gail Stavisky, chief curator at the Montclair Museum of Art and organizer of The Unseen Cindy Sherman: Early Transformations (1975-76) in her essay which accompanies the exhibition. “These prophetic works parody the styles and conventions of such sources of idealized femininity as women's magazines, old movies, and television. Already, they are not conventional self-portraits but inventions of different characters through varieties of costume, makeup, setting, facial expression and pose, which draw, nonetheless, upon the artist's own experiences and preoccupations. Sherman is her own actress, scenarist, cinematographer, lighting designer, makeup artist, and costumer. Exhibited together as a group for the first time, they provide and opportunity to look anew at Sherman's work in the fill context of her formative life experiences and artistic influences.”



Complementing The Unseen Cindy Sherman: Early Transformations (1975-76), Cindy Sherman: Western New York Collections will include works by Cindy Sherman which are in public and private collections in Western New York including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Burchfield-Penney Art Center and Castellani Art Museum.