Kavi Gupta is pleased to participate in Art Basel’s OVR: Pioneers—an online experience dedicated to artists who have broken new ground in terms of their aesthetics, conceptual approach, socio-political themes, or their use of specific media—with Deborah Kass: The Warhol Project. Kass’ Warhol Project cemented her as one of the most crucial voices for Feminist art in the 1990s. Adroitly recreating Warhol's signature style, Kass leveraged the cultural clout of the existing canon to challenge systems of power.
Beginning in 1992, Kass' expansive Warhol Project marked a landmark achievement for Post Modern Feminist art. Advances in Feminist painting during the 1960s and 1970s had been disrupted, in part by the masculine bravado of the Reagan era. Feminist artists pivoted towards mediums such as photography, printmaking, graphic design, and new media, with artists like Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger, and Jenny Holzer pushing boundaries. Wishing to use the new language of subjectivity developed throughout the 1980s to rekindle the potential for Feminist painting, Kass began appropriating recognizable styles from the contemporary canon, cleverly injecting it with her own narrative. Andy Warhol was a natural fit for the gesture, himself having appropriated photography for his signature screenprinted paintings. Kass carefully studied his techniques in order to emulate his style with incredible precision, deftly interjecting her own subject matter.