“Put up Human was just about a manifesto trumpeting a brand new artwork for a brand new breed of human,” wrote the artwork historian and curator Robert Rosenblum discussing the influence of the exhibition within the October 2004 problem of Artforum.
In 1992, Put up Human, curated by Jeffrey Deitch, introduced collectively the work of thirty-six younger artists fascinated by technological development, social and aesthetic pluralism, and new frontiers of physique and id transformation. By their artwork, these artists had been exploring the identical questioning of conventional notions of gender, sexuality and self-identity that was—and nonetheless is—happening on the planet at massive. Capturing a creating social and scientific phenomenon, Put up Human theorized a brand new strategy to the development of the self and interpretation of what defines being human. The exhibition set the agenda for the Nineties, and its affect on artists and philosophers led to a brand new discipline of educational examine.
In her e-book Posthuman Feminism (2022), the thinker and feminist theoretician Rosi Braidotti credit Deitch for capturing “the avant-garde spirit of the age by foregrounding the function of know-how in blurring binary boundaries between topics and objects, people and non-humans.” She provides, “Put up Human confirmed additionally that artwork assumed a way more central function because it merged with science, computerization and biotechnology in additional re-shaping the human kind and perfecting a aptitude for the unreal.”
{The catalogue} of the 1992 exhibition, with its visible essay and revolutionary design by the late Dan Friedman, additionally proved lasting relevance. Deitch’s influential essay predicted most of the scientific and sociological shifts which have since formed our cultural and social setting, even the pandemic.
Greater than thirty years later, Put up Human at Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles, revisits the theme of the exhibition, bringing the discourse into the current. The present contains a number of of the important thing figures who participated within the 1992 exhibition in dialogue with among the most attention-grabbing artists persevering with the exploration of those themes in the present day. Consistent with the social and technological developments that impressed it, the curiosity in figuration of the unique artists and the youthful generations introduced within the present is conceptual moderately than formal. 
(Pippa Garner, Human Prototype, 2020, blended media, 78 × 33 × 36 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Stars)
A lot of the then-new figurative work was descriptive of the “actual” world however can’t, the truth is, be referred to as “life like” within the typical sense. That’s as a result of a lot of the “actual” world the artists had been reacting to had develop into synthetic. With the idea of the true disintegrating by means of an acceptance of the multiplicity of actuality fashions and the embrace of artificiality, Realism because it was as soon as recognized was not attainable. This new figurative artwork might have truly marked the top of Realism moderately than its revival.
Totally built-in into our pop psychology, the time period “posthuman” is now utilized in on a regular basis conversations and has come to primarily establish with the trope of the cyborg. This exhibition, just like the 1992 present, nonetheless, examines a number of declinations and features of the postmodern development of character and the engineering and transcendence of the human physique. The artists within the exhibition embrace notions of plurality, metamorphosis and multi-beingness. Cyber-futuristic, surgically improved, commodified, stereotyped, and politicized, the “cultured physique” lends itself to mirror on quite a lot of issues that outline our age.
A number of works within the exhibition will embrace the biometrical aestheticization of the human physique to deal with the decay paranoia, the social battle over genetic engineering and using biotechnologies, and the dialog across the limits of “pure” life.” Artists have lengthy engaged with the threats of biometric surveillance, the potential for digital actuality overtaking our bodily one, the accelerating real-time consumption of expertise, and the automation of the workforce. As AI’s means to meet our artistic and specialised wants has reached mass fruition, artists are confronting the influence of what was as soon as thought-about speculative science fiction, an on a regular basis actuality.
Put up Human was first introduced at FAE, Musée D’artwork Contemporain, Pully/Lausanne (June 14–September 13, 1992) and traveled to Castello di Rivoli—Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli/Turin (October 1–November 22, 1992), Deste Basis, Home of Cyprus, Athens (December 3, 1992–February 14, 1993), Deichtorhallen Hamburg (March 12–Could 9, 1993), Israel Museum, Jerusalem (June 23–October 10, 1993). Quite a lot of the works proven in 1992-1993 are actually in worldwide museum collections. Matthew Barney’s REPRESSIA (decline) (1991) is now within the assortment of LACMA, the place it was on view in 2023. Posthumanism has since been the topic of numerous books, motion pictures and high-profile exhibitions.
Put up Human might be introduced as a part of the Collaborating Gallery Program for Getty’s PST Artwork: Artwork & Science Collide, becoming a member of in a dynamic exploration of the intersection of artwork and science this fall. The exhibition is curated by Jeffrey Deitch with Viola Angiolini, Senior Director, Analysis and Curatorial Tasks.
The artists taking part within the exhibition are:
Isabelle Albuquerque, Matthew Barney, Ivana Bašić, Frank Benson, Ashley Bickerton, Maurizio Cattelan, John Currin, Chris Cunningham, Alex Da Corte, Olivia Erlanger, Jana Euler, Rachel Feinstein, Urs Fischer, Pippa Garner, Robert Gober, Hugh Hayden, Damien Hirst, Tishan Hsu, Anne Imhof, Arthur Jafa, Jamian Juliano-Villani, Mike Kelley, Josh Kline, Jeff Koons, Paul McCarthy, Sam McKinniss, Mariko Mori, Takashi Murakami, Cady Noland, Charles Ray, Cindy Sherman, Kiki Smith, Hajime Sorayama, Anna Uddenberg, Cajsa Von Zeipel, Jeff Wall, Jordan Wolfson, Anicka Yi
