's (b. 1947) work engages many of the core tenets of postmodern art, in particular challenging notions of originality, authenticity, and identity. Levine rose to prominence as a member of the Pictures Generation, a group of artists based in New York in the late 1970s and 1980s whose work examined the structures of signification underlying mass-circulated images, and, in many cases, directly appropriated these images in order to imbue them with new, critically inflected meaning. Since then, Levine has created a singular and complex body of work in a variety of media that often explicitly reproduces artworks and motifs from the Western art-historical canon as well as non-Western cultures.

Born in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, Levine studied at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where she received her M.F.A. in 1973. Early solo exhibitions were held at 3 Mercer Street, New York (1977); Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo (1978); and The Kitchen, New York (1979).

In 2011, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York presented 

, a major exhibition of Levine’s work spanning three decades. The show included one of her most acclaimed series from 1981—a group of twenty-two photographs of reproductions of Walker Evans’s photographs from his Farm Security Administration-commissioned project to document the rural South during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Referencing the loss of uniqueness as a result of mechanical (and digital) reproduction, and ironically using a medium generally held responsible for diminishing the value of the artist’s hand, 

 emphasizes a description of the pictures in contextual, rather than formal terms.

Levine’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at prominent institutions worldwide, including at Neues Museum, State Museum for Art and Design in Nuremberg (2016); Portland Art Museum, Oregon (2013); Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, Germany (2010); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2009 and 1991); and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico (2007). Other venues include Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany (1998); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Menil Collection, Houston (both 1995); Portikus, Frankfurt (1994); Philadelphia Museum of Art (1993); Kunsthalle Zürich (1991); High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC (both 1988); and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut (1987).

Levine’s work has been represented by David Zwirner since 2015. Her inaugural solo exhibition with the gallery was on view in New York the following year. In 2017, 

 was presented at the gallery’s London location. 

, the artist’s third solo exhibition with David Zwirner, was on view in 2019 at the gallery’s East 69th Street location. In 2021, 

 was presented at David Zwirner, Hong Kong. A solo presentation of the artist’s work was on view at David Zwirner, Paris, in the Spring of 2023. A concurrent presentation entitled 

 was also on view at the gallery’s East 69th Street location in New York. Levine lives and works in New York.

Work by the artist is held in major international museum collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The National Museum of Art, Osaka; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate, United Kingdom; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Sherrie Levine, Dark Blue Moonlight After Man Ray: 11, 2016

Kay Heymer is Head of Modern Art at the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf, Germany.

Kay Heymer

Sherrie Levine: African Masks After Walker Evans

 continues the artist’s questioning of traditional ideas of originality and authorship, developed over four decades, and her interest in the deconstruction of images and objects from the past in order to create new relationships with contemporary audiences today. Through repetition, duplication and restatement, this series not only re-examines the central and ongoing concerns of Levine’s artistic practice but also revisits one of the most prominent subjects of her oeuvre – the work of Walker Evans.

I–XXIV 

Sherrie Levine: African Masks After Walker Evans

Sherrie Levine: African Masks After Walker Evans | Books

David Zwirner is an art gallery with locations in New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris and Hong Kong. We present physical and online exhibitions, podcasts, books, and more.