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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JOSH GOSFIELD: Gigi Gaston, The Black Flower
Exhibition: October 22 – November 25, 2009
Reception: October 22, 6-8pm
Press:
Phillips de Pury, New York New York Catalogue, December 2009
Artnet,
November 2009
The
New Yorker, November 16, 2009
The
New Yorker, November 2, 2009
Photo District News,
December 4, 2009
The Daily Beast,
November 19, 2009
WNYC
Soundcheck, October 26, 2009
New York, November
2, 2009
Radio Campus
Press, December 1, 2009
WFMU, November 22, 2009
The Daily Heller,
October 22, 2009
Design Arts Daily, October
22, 2009
Josh Gosfield has assembled the definitive archive devoted to the 1960s French pop star Gigi Gaston.
Gigi’s
music and the spectacle of her tragic life riveted the public through the 60s and 70s. The exhibition
documents
her life and loves with archival photographs, posters, record covers, magazine and newspaper articles, a music
video shot by Jean Luc Godard, documentary footage,
and assorted ephemera. We see her Gypsy family’s
escape from Bulgaria, her affair with her stepbrother, her first guitar, her rise up (and fall down)
the charts, the
car crashes, funerals, love triangles and the murder trial. All this played out in a garish media spotlight
before the
insatiable eyes of her public.
As Norman Mailer wrote, in a 1974 Esquire story:
“Could this Black Flower with a voice like Piaf have guessed that when she bloomed into a teenage
singing idol
for post-war European youth, and later became the Continental fashion icon and sexy French pin-up girl
on the
bedroom walls of the hippest kids, that the future would strangle her dreams of normalcy, like the protagonists
in one her romantically fatalistic songs? No, of course not. Because the characters of Greek tragedies
are
always the last to know their fates.”
We see Gaston’s first 45, Je Suis Ici (Où es-tu?), which sold two million copies in
1961 and changed
everything. We see her third single, L’Etranger, which stirred Françoise Hardy to exclaim, “The more I heard it
the more upset I became. I actually thought about quitting the business. But in the end I could not
let her show
me up.” We see Gigi on the covers of 60s periodicals Tutta Musica, Flamme, Strip, Pop Weekly,
New
Musical Express, Jour de France, Photoplay, Fabulous, and more. Gaston was the poster girl for Gitane.
Her
marriage to Italian film star Giorgio Fortuna was on the cover of Paris Match. When that marriage descended
into infidelity and murder, the trial was a worldwide sensation.
The exhibition will feature over 50 oversized prints -- limited edition archival digital prints featuring
Gigi. The
largest prints are approximately 40 x 60”. Accompanying the exhibition is a magazine compilation
of Gigi
graphics, in an edition limited to 125 signed copies.
In fact Gigi Gaston did not exist. Her persona and all her documents are the fictional creation of Josh
Gosfield
working with the aid of actors, stylists, make up artists, and Photoshop. This exhibition can leave
you wondering
if Madonna exists. How do you know?
Josh Gosfield is painter, photographer, illustrator and videographer who has exhibited and been published
widely. He resides in New York City.
Gigi Gaston, The Black Flower will be on view October 22nd through November
25th, 2009.
Steven Kasher Gallery is located at 521 W. 23rd St., New York, NY 10011.
Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11 to 6pm.
For more info or press requests please contact Kat Jones
at 212 966 3978 or kat@stevenkasher.com.
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