Group Show: Folk Devil

On view at David Zwirner’s West 19th Street galleries in New York, Folk Devil brings together a diverse group of international artists. The exhibition’s title is a reference to sociologist Stanley Cohen’s description of the British media’s hostile reaction towards deviant youth groups in the 1960s, and embodies a deep-rooted fear of subcultures and the morally aberrant. Folk Devil presents a comment on the tendency to create artificial connections between a group of individuals, while it also contains a self-referential statement on the yearly summer shows held at many art galleries under various umbrella themes.
Artists include Lynn Chadwick, Spartacus Chetwynd, Marlene Dumas, Nikolas Gambaroff, Brian Griffiths, Roger Hiorns, Ryan McGinley, Oscar Murillo, Mike Nelson, Eddie Peake, Jason Rhoades, Steven Shearer, Oscar Tuazon, Sophie von Hellermann, Franz West, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, among others.
The exhibition is curated by Associate Director Rodolphe von Hofmannsthal.