Persuasion

Persuasion: "Lombard-Freid Fine Arts is pleased to present Persuasion, an exhibition addressing the provocative dialogue between contemporary artists and key avant-garde figures who have explored the intersections between art, politics and propaganda. The exhibition mainly focuses on three areas of inquiry: agitational propaganda of one-party regimes, concealed propaganda of Western democracies, and oppositional propaganda as stated by the individual artist.

Throughout the history of twentieth century, artists have concurrently conjured up and made critical use of propagandistic devices and visual codes established in the advertising industry to generate more openly assertive analyses of power. Presenting side by side contemporary art works with archival photographs, political posters, pioneering book covers and page layouts, this brief survey reflects the capacity of aesthetics to affect deep structures of social belief. The show considers such issues as the representation of human body in light of racist doctrines, the rapport between architecture and nationalist ideology, the heroization of labor and productivity during the first half of the century, and the exploitation of behavioral psychology in the current climate of consumerist culture.

Persuasion showcases works by Cristian Alexa, Steven Brower, Tseng Kwong Chi, Sue Coe, Jeremy Deller, Sylvie Fleury, Joy Garnett, Gregory Green, Renee Green, Group AES, Group Material, Wang Guangyi, Hans Haacke, Jenny Holzer, Timothy Hutchings, Robin Kahn, Komar and Melamid, Zofia Kulik, Via Lewandowsky, Zbigniew Libera, Antonio Muntadas, Shirin Neshat, NSK (Laibach, IRWIN, and New Collectivism), Daniel Pflumm, Andrea Robbins and Max Becher, Martha Rosler, Thomas Ruff, Tom Sachs, Paul Schambroom, Art Spiegelman, Mike Stevenson, Maciej Toporowicz, Carrie Mae Weems, and David Wojnarowicz.

Also on view are historical works by Max Al’pert, Atelier Populaire, Lev Borodulin, Bob Fletcher, Stanislaw Gawlinski, John Heartfield, Gustav Klutsis, K�the Kollwitz, Boris Kudojarow, Valentina Kulagina, El Lissitzky, Sergey Loskutov, Charles Moore, NASA/Apollo 10, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Sergei Sen’kin, Anatolii Skurikhin, Varvara Stepanova, Marion Post Wolcott, Georgi Zelma, and Alexander Zhitomirsky."