ZURICH.- From 27 November 2015 to 28 February 2016, the Kunsthaus Zürich presents an exhibition of self-portraits entitled ‘Me/Not Me’. The 34 paintings, sculptures and graphic works, photos and videos from the Kunsthaus collection include pieces by Chuck Close, Lovis Corinth, Urs Fischer, Giovanni and Alberto Giacometti, Urs Lüthi, Manon, Marianne Mueller, Arnulf Rainer, Gillian Wearing and many others.

Who am I? For centuries, artists have sought answers to that question in their self-portraits. ‘Me/Not Me’ looks at their exploration of their own ‘self’, the acuities and depths of their own existence. Yet self-portraits are invariably also deliberately staged: as a reflection of what artists wish to convey about themselves and a reference to their own time. To this day, the increasingly uncompromising examination of the self since the advent of modernism continues to influence artists’ engagement with the topic of the self-portrait. In the 19th century, research into the psyche, coupled with technological and social change, transformed conceptions of what constitutes identity. Since the 1960s, the focus has shifted again from the exploration of the self to an approach in which one’s own body becomes a means of investigating the other, the alien, and, at the same time, probing the limits of the self.

For guest curator Daniela Hardmeier, the starting point of this exhibition in the ‘Picture Ballot’ series is the collection of the Kunsthaus Zürich. The interplay of the works in the exhibition, which are drawn primarily from the 20th and 21st centuries, creates a dialogue that turns the spotlight on issues of the perception, construction and refraction of identity.

GIOVANNI AND ALBERTO GIACOMETTI. I, MAN AND ARTIST
Artists’ self-examination reveals not only the idealized self-image but also crises, doubts, and confrontations with their own limitations. The fixating gaze seeks to penetrate one’s own shell and render tangible what lies within. The self-portrait plays an important role in the work of Giovanni Giacometti, as it does for many of his contemporaries. In ‘Self-Portrait’ (around 1913/14), he presents himself to the viewer as a self-confident artist assured of his status. He stares at us over his shoulder, challenging us. The intensity of the gaze, strong colour contrasts and frozen movement define this picture. The ‘Self-Portrait’ (1921) by his son Alberto, in contrast, is imbued with reserve and distance. Yet he presents himself with no less self-confidence, at just twenty years old: formally rigorous and carefully studied, the painting is a programmatic statement, attesting to the end of his apprenticeship under his father and the interest in Egyptian art that stayed with him throughout his life. It is no coincidence that his face resembles the celebrated portrait of the head of Akhenaten (around 1340 BC).

CHUCK CLOSE. THE PHOTOGRAPHED SELF
While the painted image allows artists to react directly to what they see, classical photography virtually precludes any such feedback process. As soon as the shutter release has been pressed, the expression and pose of the model are irrevocably tied to the image; interventions can now only be made during development or by electronic post-editing. In his ‘Self-Portrait’ (2000), Chuck Close studies his own face soberly, yet not without emotion. The camera scans the surface of this head, giving equal prominence to every part, crease and line. From the darkness emerges an individual who is self-assured and returns the viewer’s gaze with great openness. Distance and proximity are in equilibrium as Close invites us to share in his exploration. His penetrating stare may also be linked to the fact that he himself is unable to identify people by their faces.

URS LÜTHI. MAN OR WOMAN, I OR THE OTHER?
The social transformations that marked the closing decades of the 20th century are mirrored in our changing view of the self. The body becomes a means to investigate not just oneself but also the other; variants of gender and social role are questioned, extremes explored. When Urs Lüthi dreams of a world in which ‘the individual becomes the general and ambivalence is a fundamental attitude’, he speaks to the profound rifts that exist within the modern human being. In his ‘Self-Portrait’ diptych (1976), he presents himself as a seductive, androgynous youth, but also as its opposite. The obvious transvestism allows the viewer to overlook that Lüthi is stylizing himself as a representative, confronted with the longings, stories and problems that we all carry within us.

GILLIAN WEARING. I AM MANY
Today, multiple conceptions of lifestyle and identity are omnipresent, and the dictum ‘I am many’ is truer now than ever. What we refer to as ‘I’ is an empty space filled according to one’s own priorities; it is a self-produced, variable construct. In her photographs, Gillian Wearing slips into the roles of other people; but by giving her works titles such as ‘Me as Sander’ (2012) and imitating real individuals, she goes a step further. With her mask, she does not simply take on the outer shell of the other person: she actually seems to invest them. This act of appropriation is almost tangible and makes the viewer shiver. Where does it lead: to the extinction of the self or the other; or to amalgamation into a new ‘I’? Such questions are of increasing urgency in our highly technological and increasingly virtualized world; and they are ones that many other artists in the exhibition address.

ARTISTIC RESPONSES TO SOCIAL TRANSFORMATIONS
The principal work in the ‘Picture Ballot!’ series is chosen each year by the members of the Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft. In 2015, Alberto Giacometti’s self-portrait was selected as the basis for a curatorial investigation. The works assembled around the self-portrait of the celebrated Swiss artist offer varying artistic responses to social transformations: from natural, oblivious self-reassurance to the dazzling mirror of an era whose manifold facets can be read from one’s own likeness in the form of internal and external manifestations.