NYAB Event - Debby Hymowitz "Sexual Evolution"

Debby Hymowitz "Sexual Evolution"

Galeria Ramis Barquet (Chelsea)

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Ramis Barquet Gallery presents Sexual Evolution, a series of large format film portraits by Debby Hymowitz.

In her first solo exhibition at the gallery, Hymowitz's Sexual Evolution tackles the complex question of female identity, sexuality and self-fashioning. Born of the photographer's own questioning of these subjects, Hymowitz embarked on a project to disprove archetypes and challenge fixed notions of femaleness. The result is a suite of portraits that display the unending range of what it means to be a woman. "I chose subjects based on my subjective liberal definition of what makes someone female," she has said. On first view many of these subjects seem to embody an archetype that persists vividly in the Western imaginary, but looking closer they are upended by some conflicting quality that makes these women more human than meets the eye. Shown together, the photos in Sexual Evolution comprise a "beautifully heterogeneous" panorama that represents not only New York City's native diversity, where these works were made, but the fluid contours of modern female identity on a universal scale.

Hymowitz's approach in creating these portraits was an investigative one. The photographer first interviewed her subjects at length on the topics of sexuality and the expression of their gender. From this she developed an individual concept for each individual shoot, "telling the story of that woman." Hymowitz has painted the names of the sexual partners of her subjects on their skin, as if the old adage of a picture being "worth a thousand words" would not suffice to convey their stories efficiently. Despite their alluring carnality, the result is more than skin deep. Each portrait uncovers the life behind every woman's sexual history. Executed with great candor and intention, the subjects are shot dead-on so as to confront the viewer, just as Hymowitz set out to confront popular perceptions of femaleness and to create context and community for her own changing identity

Debby Hymowitz was born in Somerville, New Jersey in 1966. She lives and works in New York City.