Lynn Hershman Leeson

Renowned artist Lynn Hershman Leeson invites audiences to embark on a transformative journey through time, identity, and the future of human existence with her latest exhibition, Anti-Aging. This is the artist’s third solo show with the gallery and presents a culmination of Hershman Leeson's decades-long exploration of this complex concept. The installation spans myriad forms—drawings, paintings, photographs, sculpture, multi-media works and video—from her earliest images depicting humans merging with machines to her latest experiments with bio-technology.

Hershman Leeson’s new video, Cyborgian Rhapsody: Immortality, 2023, makes its East Coast premiere introducing a cyborg named Sarah (born in 2029). Sarah is looking for human collaborators and finds them easily by infiltrating social media feeds. The cyborg interrupts two young girls, mid-scroll, with an inquisitive monologue telling the children about her military kin, misrepresentations of technology and the true threat to our consciousness: hatred and greed. Cyborgian Rhapsody is the follow-up to Hershman Leeson’s acclaimed 2022 film, Logic Paralyzes the Heart, 2022 which received Special Mention by the jury of the 2022 Venice Biennale.

Eternally Yours, 2023 is a sculpture housing a refrigerated anti-aging vaccine derived from the artist’s 2014 installation, “The Infinity Engine,” which was a replica genetics lab that addressed the ramifications of programming DNA and CRISPR. Hershman Leeson says,

“When I followed up with the scientists that I had interviewed for “The Infinity Engine,” ten years ago, I was amazed that all of them were now doing work that dealt with anti-aging. Many scientists now say that "aging" is a disease to be cured. In the United States and Europe, experiments with aging can not be done on humans, though they have been able to experiment on rats. I worked with Swiss scientist Dr. Thomas Huber and we ordered this anti-aging vaccine for humans from a lab in China.”

Interspersed thought the exhibition are Hershman Leeson’s more subtle meditations on aging—a clock running in reverse, a re-cut interview she conducted with Leonora Carrington in the 1980s and pencil portraits on thin skins of paper.

Lynn Hershman Leeson (b. 1941 Cleveland, OH) lives and works in San Francisco and New York. Recent exhibitions include La Biennale di Venezia 2022, 59th International Art Exhibition: The Milk of Dreams; In 2021, her solo exhibition, Twisted, at The New Museum in New York. Her retrospective exhibition, Civic Radar, traveled from ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany (2014) to Deichtorhallen Hamburg / Sammlung Falckenberg, Germany (2015); Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany (2016); and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2017). Recent solo exhibitions have been held at Altman Siegel, San Francisco (2022); Bürobasel, Basel, Switzerland (2021); Rozenstraat, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2021); Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo Comunidad de Madrid (2019); KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2018); Haus der elektronischen Künste, Basel (2018); Modern Art Oxford, UK (2015); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2013), and the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester (2007). Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Museion, Bolzano, Italy (2022); The Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2022); Museum Brandhorst, Munich (2022); Jut Art Museum, Taipei City, Taiwan (2022); de Young Museum, San Francisco (2020); The Shed, New York (2019); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2019); Institute of Contemporary Art Boston (2018); Whitney Museum of American Art (2017); and Whitechapel Gallery, London (2016); as well as international exhibitions, including the Gwangju Biennial, Korea (2021), Riga Biennial of Contemporary Art (2018) and the Glasgow International (2018). Her films have screened at the Sundance Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, and the Berlin International Film Festival, among others. Hershman Leeson has received numerous awards, including an Prix Ars Electronica 2020 Award of Distinction (2020); a VIA Art Fund Award (2019); a Siggraph Lifetime Achievement Award (2018), the College Art Association’s Distinguished Feminist Award (2018), the Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award from the 60th San Francisco International Film Festival (2017), a United States Artists Fellowship (2016), an Anonymous Was a Woman Award (2014), and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2009).