Known for bringing private lives into the public realm through projects like her iconic 1992-3 ‘Signs,’ for which strangers posed with signs sharing their personal thoughts, British conceptual artist Gillian Wearing continues to probe beyond the surface in recent work on view in her career retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum. Based on mid-to late 19th century French artist Henri Fantin-Latour’s ‘La Lecture (The Reading),’ Wearing’s update includes herself on the left, not just listening to the reading, but gazing intently upon the reader. Fantin-Latour’s characters famously exist in their private worlds, not always connecting with each other. Wearing, on the other hand, is absorbed by the world inhabited by her companion. (On view on the Upper East Side through April, ’22).
