Lari Pittman
dal 22/3/2002 al 4/5/2002
Segnalato da
22/3/2002
Lari Pittman
Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York
The Los Angeles-based artist is widely recognized as one of the most significant painters working today. One commentator, Christopher Knight, asserts that Pittman has restored American painting to the cultural significance it had lost by the 1970s, with the demise of Modernism.
Barbara Gladstone Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Lari Pittman. Born in 1952 in Glendale, California, the Los Angeles-based artist is widely recognized as one of the most significant painters working today. One commentator, Christopher Knight, asserts that Pittman has restored American painting to the cultural significance it had lost by the 1970s, with the demise of Modernism.
Drawing from iconographic sources as disparate as cartoons, popular advertising, Catholic art and Caspar David Friedrich, Pittman creates visually arresting tableaux containing superimposed, simultaneous narratives. In the profusion of imagery in his paintings, the mixing of high and low cultural references levels aesthetic hierarchies while celebrating the pluralistic identities, sexual, philosophical, cultural or otherwise that define L.A. culture. For Pittman, whose family roots are half Colombian Catholic and half Anglo-Saxon Presbyterian, the reconciliation of apparent opposites has always been an intuitive process.
Slick, artificial surfaces, highly stylized imagery and elaborate decoration make Pittman's paintings appear at first cheery and light. However, beyond the ravishing surface the mood may be equally ominous and blissful, as the works often contain images of violence and decay as well as utopian fantasy. Rather than serving as extraneous embellishment, decorative elements such as scrolls, arrows, borders and patterns function as formal devices to draw the eye towards significant focal points. Howard Fox likens the role of decoration in Pittman's work to the mosaic of spectral colors in stained-glass windows of Gothic cathedrals, [which] amplify the spiritual or metaphysical content with ecstatic visual display.
In this new series of paintings on panel and paper, Pittman's diverse repertoire of imagery offers a wide latitude of interpretations. Vignettes of land- and seascapes are glimpsed among objects of domestic use such as chairs, lampshades and ladders, interspersed with nooses, cobwebs, vessels and disembodied eyes which perhaps signify the occult. Stylized patterns reminiscent of brick walls, linoleum and wallpaper are tiled throughout and concentrated pools of artificial light suggest that these scenes occur at twilight, positioning the viewer within a domestic interior, looking outside. In Pittman's works there exists a self-contained universe of images that are evocative rather than iconic, from which the viewer is free to extract his or her own interpretations, and cultivate a more private, primary experience with the art.
Lari Pittman was awarded the J. Paul Getty Trust Fund for the Visual Arts Fellowship Grant in Painting in 1989 and NEA Fellowship Grants in Painting in 1987, 1989, and 1993. He is also this year's recipient of the Skowhegan Medal for Painting. His recent solo exhibitions include: ICA, London; Centre d'Art Contemporain, Geneva; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Corcoran Museum, Washington DC; and Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston. Pittman is Professor of Fine Arts at UCLA and lives and works in Los Angeles.
For further information please contact Emily Wei
Barbara Gladstone
515 West 24th Street, NY 10011
T 212.206.9300 F 212.206.9301