RENTAL is proud to present Richard Kern: 1980 –1999, a retrospective of the artists’
photographic and video work. Richard Kern, photographer, filmmaker, video director, and
occasional pornographer, and a man once amicably referred to as the 'Evil Cameraman',
remains, first and foremost, a portrait artist. For more than two decades Kern has - with a
shifting band of accomplices that, over the years, has included post-punk diva Lydia
Lunch, artists such as David Wojnarowicz, Karen Finley, Rita Ackermann and Lucy
McKenzie, the novelist Geoff Nicholson, and musicians such as Sonic Youth, the Butthole
Surfers and Marilyn Manson - sought to both unravel and illuminate the complex and
often darker sides of human nature.
Born in 1954, Richard Kern has lived and worked in New York City since 1979. In the
eighties, he produced a series of short films that now are recognized as the central
works of the movement now known as the Cinema of Transgression. In the 90’s he
switched to photography full time and occasionally directed music videos for bands like
Sonic Youth and Marilyn Manson. Kern has published nine books and is a regular
contributor to a variety of international publications, and exhibiting his photographs in
galleries internationally.
