Fifty-five years after its 1967 opening, Thaddaeus Ropac London is delighted to present the exhibition Sturtevant: Dialectic of Distance, retracing the performance of American artist Sturtevant (1924–2014) in which she recreated The Store (1961) by Claes Oldenburg. 

Known for her disconcerting replicas of works by her contemporaries that would become iconic, Sturtevant’s practice challenges the prevailing discourse around originality and authenticity in art. In 1967, Sturtevant rented a shop on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, in which she displayed several coloured plaster objects including dresses, cakes, hamburgers and cigarette butts as part of a happening re-enacting Oldenburg’s famous performance. Fourteen of the objects Sturtevant made in the 1960s will be brought together for the first time in this exhibition alongside The Dark Threat of Absence (2002), a video work in which Sturtevant re-enacts Paul McCarthy’s film Painter (1995). Together, the two works will provide a rare insight into the pioneering artist’s multifaceted practice.