Keith Edmier Mother Mold, brings together the 50 unique life-cast portraits of the artist’s work, Imagines; inspired by ancient Roman life-casts of the same name. Stemming from his years in Hollywood working as a special effects make-up artist, Edmier’s cast portraits connect in intimate ways: they portray the artist’s family, friends, heroes, and influences. The connection to Hollywood turns the permanence and memorial of the life mask into a starting point for the transformation to come. Michael Jackson--becomes a teenage werewolf, Jeff Goldblum-- The Fly, David Bowie--a New Wave vampire, and Matthew Barney--a well-groomed Satyr. As in all of Edmier’s work, one can find familiar identities and structures reshaped and transformed.
Each life-cast portrait is presented as a postcard; the reverse of which, written in Edmier’s own hand, provides interesting details about the individual casts. The set of postcards is presented in a hard-back ‘stone’ box-envelop, with white debossed text.
Keith Edmier Mother Mold was created on the occasion of Edmier’s sixth solo show at Petzel, September 6th-November 4th, 2017.
Publisher: Petzel, New York, 2017
Language: English
Boxed/Softcover: 50 pages
Dimensions: 8.25 x 6 inches
ISBN: 978-0-9988381-1-3
About the artist
Keith Edmier (b. 1967, Chicago, IL)
Keith Edmier is an American sculptor born in 1967 in Chicago. He received his B.F.A. in 1986 from the California Institute of the Arts. Edmier currently lives and works in New York.
With a background in special-effects makeup and film, Edmier went on to become influenced by neo-conceptualist and appropriation art during his time at the California Institute of the Arts. Using many different mediums, Edmier blends pop culture and autobiographical references, recreating his personal history in an uncanny way with the simultaneous nostalgia and humor of his present perspective.
Edmier has shown his work internationally at many galleries and institutions. He has had numerous solo exhibitions at Petzel Gallery (2015-2020), Bob Rauschenberg Gallery at Florida SouthWestern State College, Fort Myers (2015), Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem (2013), the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh (2003), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles (2002), The University at Albany Art Museum, Albany (2008), CCS Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson (2007), and Neugerriemschneider Gallery, Berlin (2000).
His work has been featured in group exhibitions at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2019); Kunsthal Rotterdam, Netherlands (2018); Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York (2017); Yokohama Art Museum, Yokohama (2016); the Sculpture Center, New York (2013); Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (2012); Kunstwerke, Berlin (2007); Tate Modern, London (2007); Tate Liverpool, Liverpool (2005); Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome (2007); Kunsthalle Vienna (2004); Migros Museum, Zurich (2004), and the Whitney Biennial, New York (2002), among others.
Edmier’s work is in collections of such museums including the Tate Gallery, London; the Israel Museum; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York the Denver Art Museum; and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, among others.
He is the recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation 2001 Biennial Award.
