A restaging of a 1974 exhibition held in Lucerne, Switzerland, ‘Transformer’ plunges us into the panstick world of politically tinged art drag. You’ll see a smooth, flat chest topped by lipstick, supported by stockings; a pout framed by a manly jaw. Yet, if this photography show tells us anything, it’s not about transformation but about its limits. Women may toy with forms of femininity, but no woman gets to wear her gender like an outfit. The boys here – such as Jürgen Klauke and Andy Warhol, represented by the poster for his 1971 film ‘Women in Revolt!’ – are playing dress-up for all kinds of serious reasons. And the freedom and the anxiety of that are both on display.
‘Transformer’, of course, nicks its title from Lou Reed’s 1972 album, a perfectly sensible act of theft for an aesthetic that was – and still is – all about borrowing. You could argue that Reed’s recent death lends this show a more uneasy level of meaning, though, because looking at these pretty, painted faces of yesteryear can feel a little like viewing a well-mummified corpse. Yet, if gender confusion simply isn’t the provocation it once was, it’s partly thanks to the pioneering artists here.
Nina Caplan