NEW YORK, NY.- Skarstedt is presenting George Condo: Paintings & Works on Paper, an exhibition of new works on view from November 11 – December 21, 2019 at Skarstedt, 19 East 64th Street.
The exhibition presents six large scale works on paper which explore the inner activity of the human psyche in relationship with the external presence of the physical body. Executed on a scale traditionally reserved for major paintings, these recent works on paper feature ravishingly beautiful surfaces built up from layer upon layer of gesso, ink washes and metallic paints. Along side these larger works on paper is a suite of smaller improvisational drawings which are colorful and humorous and further engage many of Condo’s ideas about Psychological Cubism as applied to the portrait, revealing multiple simultaneous states of joy and horror, familiarity and the alien.
A suite of three monumentally scaled paintings created in the first half of 2019, each measuring 11 x 10 feet, exhibit a joyous use of bright and vibrant color, similar to his use of color and line in the drawings, that exudes an explosive joie de vivre rarely seen in Condo’s recent paintings.
This exhibition premieres a group of works which could be titled all in all as The Black Paintings - dark existential compositions exploring the artists own autobiographical experiences which have influenced his approach to painting. The largest scale piece from this body of work, a 7 x 14 foot painting in oil on linen titled The Consequence of Random Perspectives, delves into a both minimalist and figurative composition which in the artist’s vision reflects our conflicting thoughts about today’s geopolitical landscape where one is literally pushed to the edge attempting to figure out how to put life as we thought we knew it back in order. Thus, leaving a compound of figurative matter alone in the dark, re-assembling its own parts without any instruction manual. The familiar figures we have come to know in Condo’s work have all but been obliterated in this new series. Intersecting straight-edge lines force the viewer to look for a center from which they can balance their perception of the painting.
George Condo was born in Concord, New Hampshire in 1957. He attended the University of Massachusetts, in Lowell, where he studied Music Theory and Art History. Mr. Condo’s art can be viewed as a multi-layered experience that brings the viewer in touch with a psychological exploration of human nature. Through the process of transformation involving art historical language and an actualization of philosophical content, Condo’s paintings create a visible window into the world we live in.
In 2019, Condo was selected to participate in the 58th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia: May You Live in Interesting Times, curated by Ralph Rugoff. Condo was also the subject of a major retrospective of works on paper titled The Way I Think at the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C., in early 2017, which travelled to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark in the Fall of 2017. In 2016 Condo’s work was the feature of a museum-wide exhibition, Confrontation, at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Museum Berggruen, Berlin, curated by Udo Kittelmann. In 2011, the New Museum, New York presented the retrospective exhibition, Mental States. This exhibition travelled to Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Hayward Gallery, London; and Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt.
