Whisper Their Sinful Names

Will Alexander, John Burtle, Edgar Bryan, Michael Kennedy Costa, Max Ernst, Justin John Greene, Brigitte Nicole Grice, Skylar Haskard, Sam Hemmenway, Caitlin Keogh, Sylvie Lake, Thomas Lawson, Nicky Lesser, Shana Lutker, Nevine Mahmoud, Orion Martin, Desmond Morris, Love Nguyen, Alex Olson, Ephraim Puusemp, Edward Quinn, Penelope Rosemont, Seven Ruck, Penny Slinger, Marisa Takal, Dorothea Tanning, Chris Vasell, Benjamin Weissman, Isabel Yellin

Chez Max et Dorothea is pleased to present our inaugural group exhibition, Whisper Their Sinful Names, at the Los Angeles headquarters of Chez Max et Dorothea.

Whisper Their Sinful Names draws upon the legacies of the foundation’s namesakes: Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning. The exhibition title comes from one of Ernst's texts in Paramyths, a series of new poems & collages made for his 1949 exhibition at William Copley’s gallery in Beverly Hills, referencing their status as outsiders in their time. Today surrealism is a pillar of underlying concepts in contemporary artistic practices and has resurfaced as a critical way to examine the world we face. This “whispering” of Surrealism portrays and examines the unknown and esoteric evoked within the artists’ practices, contextualizing the works on exhibition in a larger embrace of the tenets of the Surrealist movement. Artists participating in the exhibition include longstanding Surrealist associates like Will Alexander, Desmond Morris, Penelope Rosemont, and Penny Slinger alongside a diverse group of contemporary artists exploring similar themes and tactics of the Surrealist movement such as Justin John Greene, Caitlin Keogh, Nevine Mahmoud, Shana Lutker and Seven Ruck amongst many others.

Whisper Their Sinful Names doubles as a fundraising exhibition where profits will go towards the final acquisition of Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning’s home in the South of France to once again return to a haven for artists to dwell and create. Whisper Their Sinful Names is co-curated by Dr. Brigitte Nicole Grice and Isabel Yellin.

Chez Max et Dorothea is an arts nonprofit dedicated to preserving the legacies of these artists and their final home and studios, which they designed in the South of France. At Chez Max et Dorothea we aim to look at the artist couple as both maverick individuals in their output while simultaneously celebrating and preserving some of their accomplishments within their relationship as equal partners and creative spirits. Chez Max et Dorothea operates as an exhibition space, artist residency, and research center open to the public centering around a dialogue between contemporary art and Surrealism.