01 Jul 2009

Kunstverein Hannover presents: best editions #1 – Johnny Rozsa edition of Leigh Bowery

The Kunstverein Hannover is pleased to offer the last copies of Johnny Rozsa's exclusive photo edition that was produced for Leigh Bowery's first major retrospective in Germany.

Johnny Rozsa: Leigh Bowery and Trojan, 1983/2008
2 C-prints, each 30 x 30 cm, edition of 30
600 € / for members: 400 €

With the Australian artist Leigh Bowery (1961–1994), the Kunstverein Hannover devoted itself to one of the most colourful border crossers of the London club, fashion, and art scene of the 1980s and 1990s. Bowery made his (homo)sexuality a means of aesthetic expression: He consciously used his own body in his excessive abundance as an artistic media, investigating concepts of fashion and body at the boundaries of most diverse social fields in his costumes, masquerades, and travesties.

Employing his own physical bulkiness as the starting point of an extroverted and extravagant body cult in which the concepts of ugliness and beauty, social standardisation and border crossings intersect, Bowery created a work complex behind this eccentric fashion façade which penetrated into previously unknown abysms beyond the club scene between punk ballet and SM performances.

One of the first to document Leigh Bowery's extravagant Looks was American celebrity and fashion photographer Johnny Rosza, who took those shots of Leigh Bowery and one of his closest friends, Trojan, which – though originally meant for Bowery and Trojan themselves – laid the ground for what was to come: While the Paki From Outer Space Look they feature in the edition still seems dreamy and playful in comparison with later Looks, performances and films, they mark the very verge of Leigh Bowery's rise to fame as one of the stars of the 1980s London Underground.
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Download the membership form -> here or contact us directly at mail@kunstverein-hannover.de
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The editions can be ordered
via email mail@kunstverein-hannover.de
via fax +49 511 1699278-278
via mail Kunstverein Hannover, Sophienstraße 2, D-30159 Hannover, Germany
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on show now:



Oppositions & Dialogues
May 30–August 9, 2009

Francis Alÿs | Nina Beier + Marie Lund | Rolf Bier | Mark Clare | Nathan Coley | Jeremiah Day | Öyvind Fahlström | Claire Fontaine | Lotte Lindner + Till Steinbrenner | Alex Morrison | Garrett Phelan | Bettina Pousttchi | Ulay + Marina Abramović | Jens Ullrich | Stephen Willats | Arthur Żmijewski