A spokesperson describes the event as follows:
“...Ordinary People recovers the social art history of photorealism through an exploration of its emergence in the United States in the late 1960s, when artists began blatantly and painstakingly replicating photographs by hand on canvas. The movement is often regarded as short-lived and insignificant, but Ordinary People positions it as a vital and enduring impetus in art of the past fifty years that constitutes a lasting contribution to contemporary art’s engagement with social realities. While photorealism is often regarded as marking an end—of figuration, of representation, and even of painting at the close of the 1960s—this timely exhibition recasts photorealism as a beginning. Arguing for its continuous presence in contemporary art, it features both canonical and under-recognized photorealists of the 1960s and ‘70s, such as Robert Bechtle, Vija Celmins, Richard Estes, Audrey Flack, Duane Hanson, and Idelle Weber; reconsiders well-known figures not typically associated with photorealism within photorealist frameworks from John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres to Barkley L. Hendricks, Joan Semmel, and Amy Sherald; and identifies a contemporary reception of photorealism by younger generations of artists, including Gina Beavers, Jennifer J. Lee, Brittany Tucker, and Christine Tien Wang. Baltimore-based artist Cynthia Daignault, Houston- and Los Angeles-based artist Vincent Valdez, and Los Angeles-based artists Sayre Gomez, Alfonso Gonzalez Jr., and Shizu Saldamando have created new, large-scale work specially for the exhibition…"
