George Condo’s exhibition ‘Pastels’ at Hauser & Wirth Gallery, New York City, offers a glimpse into the artist’s creative process and unbound inventiveness through the medium of pastel. Condo’s new works challenge the limits of improvisation within this medium. We see spontaneously deployed gesso, fields of color and dramatic pastel gestures, all without the benefit of preparatory sketches.
Condo expresses and navigates various states of the human psyche. He embraces the act of abstraction within a figural framework in novel ways, materializing the fragmented, elusive nature of ineffable thoughts and feelings.
The exhibition comprises a new series of puzzle-like portraits, which the artist has dubbed his ‘bizarre characters,’ their visages simultaneously splintered and affixed by bright geometric planes. The jagged electricity created by the faceted compositions of these works signals the complex and often conflicted nature of the mind.
This suite of recent works forms a visual essay on the flair and diversity of Condo’s draftsmanship, exceptional sense of color, and mastery of any material.
JANAINA TSCHÄPE AT MAX HETZLER GALLERY BERLIN Richly painted using large scale oil sticks in addition to the water-based pigments she previously employed, it marks a fresh direction in Tschäpe’s oeuvre. This material shift allows the artist to “draw” as one would with a pencil or pastel,…
DAVID HOCKNEY AT ANNELY JUDA GALLERY LONDON Following David Hockney’s celebrated exhibition at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris last summer, this show debuts never-seen-before paintings completed in the artist’s London studio over the last six months, underpinning Hockney’s unwavering commitment to and vigour for the act of…
LEE BAE “THE IN-BETWEEN” AT PERROTIN GALLERY TOKYO Korean artist Lee Bae, based in Paris and Cheongdo, has gained international recognition for is extraordinary aesthetic and material experiments with charcoal – comprising various media …
