NEW YORK, NY.- Simon Lee Gallery New York presents Fake as More, an exhibition organized by Front Desk Apparatus, NY. The exhibition features historic and contemporary works, each in varying states of repetition, replication, copy and self-copy. The exhibition is not an appropriation exhibition or a presentation of “fakes,” but attends to work that foregrounds repetition as a way of working or practice—where the materialism of the “re-creative process” is most active.

The exhibition’s title is taken from “The Fake as More,” a short essay published in 1973 under the pseudonym “Cheryl Bernstein” for a collection of essays edited by Gregory Battcock. The text describes the first one-man show by Hank Herron, a fictional artist repeating works by Frank Stella. Thomas Crow writes about this at length in 1986:

“In the early 1970s, the extreme involution of late modernist painting and the large philosophical claims that surrounded it were the objects of a sly parody. One of the authors was and remains an important historian of earlier modern art. Consistent, however, with its deadpan self-effacement as satire, the parody was published under the pseudonym of “Cheryl Bernstein” and included, with no indication as to its fraudulent status, in a widely-consulted anthology of writings on conceptual art.’

Work selected for Fake as More follows a similar thread, though different, sometimes contradictory, conclusions can be drawn. For instance, Richard Pettibone’s works on view replicate, after Herron, identifiable Stella pieces, though Pettibone, in fact, constructed them according to their reproductions in Artforum, creating several layers of displacement from the original. Sturtevant’s Warhol Licorice Marilyn (2004), continues a series of Warhol’s Marilyn copies the artist began in the 1960’s, utilizing the same source image Warhol used to create the original screenprint.

To elaborate the original premise of the copy, we also turn to artists who have dealt in re-creating their own practices. Giorgio De Chirico’s oil paintings, for example, auto-copy backdated to resemble the artist’s successful Metaphysical period. Likewise, Christopher Wool’s Untitled (2016) revisits a screenprint the artist completed in the 1990’s, painting over the original and updating the signature to read WOOL 2016. Elsewhere, Darren Bader returns to Bernstein’s notion of subversion with Sculpture #3, which transforms a sculpture by John McCracken into a storage/waste receptacle, challenging the supposed sanctity of Minimalist art. Fake As More moves in a direction that goes from A to A to arrive somewhere else.

Darren Bader was born in 1978 in Bridgeport, CT and lives and works in New York, NY. Recent solo exhibitions include Meaning and Difference, The Power Station, Dallas, TX (2017); (@mined_oud), MADRE Museum, Naples, Italy (2017); Forest/Trees, Greenspon, New York, NY (2017); chess: relatives, High Line Art, New York, NY (2017); Fig-2: 39/50: Darren Bader, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, UK (2015); Images, MoMA PS1, New York, NY (2012). Selected group exhibitions include Stories of Almost Everyone, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2018); .com/.cn, curated by Klaus Biesenbach and Peter Eleey, K11 Art Foundation Pop-up Space, Hong Kong (2017); Fleming Faloon, Office Baroque, Brussels, Belgium (2017); One, No One and One Hundred Thousand, Kunsthalle Wien Karlsplatz, Vienna, Austria (2016); Political Populism, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria (2015).

Ull Hohn was born in 1960 in Trier, Germany and died in 1995 in Berlin. Selected solo exhibitions include painting, painting, Peephole, Milan, Italy (2015); Ull Hohn, Galerie Neu, Berlin, Germany (2011); Ull Hohn, Algus Greenspon, New York, NY (2010); Ull Hohn, curated by Wolfgang Tillmans, Between Bridges, London, UK (2009); Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany (1996); American Fine Arts, Co., Colin de Land Fine Art, New York, NY (1993); and White Columns, New York, NY (1990). Recent group exhibitions include Raw and Delirious, Kunsthalle Bern, Bern, Switzerland (2015); Painting Forever! Keilrahmen, Kunst-Werke Berlin, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany (2013); Context Message, Zach Feuer, New York, NY (2012)

Sherrie Levine was born in Hazleton, PA in 1947 and lives and works in New York, NY and Santa Fe, NM. In 2011, Levine was thesubject of MAYHEM, a major solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. Other prominent solo exhibitions have been held at Neues Museum, State Museum for Art and Design, Nuremberg, Germany (2016); Portland Art Museum, Oregon (2013); Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, Germany (2010); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2009 and 1991). Selected group exhibitions include Brand New: Art and Commodity in the 1980s, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC (2018); Ordinary Pictures, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota (2016).

Richard Pettibone was born in 1938 in Los Angeles, CA and lives and works in New York. Pettibone is currently the subject of a major retrospective, Richard Pettibone: Endless Variation, at FLAG Art Foundation, New York. He has also been the subject of numerous other prominent solo exhibitions, including Richard Pettibone: Recent Works, Castelli Gallery, New York, NY (2018); Richard Pettibone: 64 Paintings, 9 Works, Castelli Gallery, New York, NY, (2016); Richard Pettibone (1964-2009), Galerie Mitterrand, Paris, France (2014); Richard Pettibone-Paintings and Sculpture: 1964-2003, David Nolan Gallery, New York, NY (2013); among others. Recent group exhibitions include Miniatures by Master Artists, Joseph K. Levene Fine Art, Ltd., New York, NY (2018); Very Appropriate, Robert Berman Gallery, Santa Monica, CA (2017); Marcel Duchamp Fountain – An Homage, Francis M. Naumann Fine Art, New York, NY (2017)

Carissa Rodriguez was born in 1970 in New York, NY and lives and works in New York. Recent solo exhibitions include The Maid,MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA (2018); The Maid, Sculpture Center, New York, NY (2018); I’m normal. I have a garden. I’m a person., CCA Wattis institute, San Francisco, CA (2015); La Collectionneuse, Front Desk Apparatus, New York, NY (2013); Karma International, Zurich, Switzerland (2012); and Swiss Institute, New York, NY (2010). Selected group exhibitions include Exo Emo, Greene Naftali, New York, NY (2017); What Everybody Knows, Svetlana, New York, NY (2017); Off Cardinal Points, Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin, Germany (2016); Theater Objects, LUMA Foundation, Zurich, Switzerland (2015); The Contract, Essex Street, New York, NY (2014).

Sturtevant was born in 1924 in Lakewood, OH and died in 2014 in Paris, France. In 2011, Sturtevant was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale. Selected recent solo exhibitions include Wanted, Power Station, Dallas, TX (2018); Sturtevant, Gavin Brown's enterprise, New York, NY (2017); The House of Horrors (le Train fantôme), Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France (2015); Double Trouble, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California, USA (2015); Drawing Double Reversal, Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, Germany (2014); Double Trouble, MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, USA (2014). Selected group exhibitions include Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (2017); Pop Art Design, Barbican Art Gallery, London, UK (2013).

Daan Van Golden was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands in 1936 and died in 2017 in Shierdam, Netherlands. Recent solo exhibitions include Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2017); Greene Naftali, New York (2016); Misako & Rosen, Tokyo (2014); GEM Museum Voor Actuele Kunst, The Hague, The Netherlands (2014); Wiels, Brussels (2012); MAMCO, Geneva, Switzerland (2009); and Camden Arts Centre, London (2008). Selected group exhibitions include A Change of Heart, curated by Chris Sharp, Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles (2016); New Generation, FRAC Nord-pas de Calais, Dunkirk, France (2014); 69/96, Gebert Foundation, Rapperwill-Jona, Switzerland (2014); Depot VBVR, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Hague, Netherlands (2012); Museion meets Migros. 20th Century Remix, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Bolzano, Bolzano, Italy (2012).

Christopher Wool was born in 1955 in Boston, MA and lives and works in New York, NY and Marfa, TX. Wool has been the subject of several major institutional exhibitions, including at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France (2017); MoMA, New York, NY (2015); Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL (2014); Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY (2013); Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France (2012); Museu Serralves, Porto, Portugal (2008). Other selected solo exhibitions include Christopher Wool: Text Without Message, Philbrook Downtown, Tulsa, OK (2017); Christopher Wool, Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin, Germany (2017); Christopher Wool, Luhring Augustine, New York, NY (2015); Christopher Wool, Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne, Germany (2011).