GEORGE CONDO A LA SIMON LEE GALLERY, LONDRES

Posted by infernolaredaction on 8 février 2014 · Laissez un commentaire

George Condo / Simon Lee Gallery, London / from 11^th February to 22^nd March 2014.

George Condo est l’invité de de la Simon Lee Gallery en février et mars pour une expo solo de ses dernières pièces. Le peintre new yorkais y montre ses anamorphoses et autres grotesques, de fabuleux portraits qui révèlent tout l’art singulier de la peinture de Condo et sa maîtrise bluffante.

Son travail qui se joue des codes de la figuration et les transgresse dans une manière grotesque et joyeuse, brillamment baroque, utilise tout le vocabulaire formel de ses prédécesseurs, souvent célèbres, et les manipule sans complexe ni tabou. Ainsi du cubisme, du surréalisme, ou de l’ expressionnisme qu’il transfigure -toujours avec une touche de provocation iconoclaste. Chez Simon Lee, papiers et peintures côtoient collages ou gravures, avec un sens surprenant de la composition caractéristique de son travail.

Jusqu’au 22 mars 2014.

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George Condo’s world is populated by a cast of characters whose bulging eyes, bulbous cheeks, proliferating limbs and hideous over- or under-bites mark apart them as a singular species. The astonishing range of art-historical sources which his pictorial language draws upon is often noted, and yet this continuity across his vastly diverse painting practice bears witness to his achievement in absorbing the revolutionary genius of Picasso, Velazquez, Matisse, Archimboldo Pollock, Twombly and countless others and making them new; characteristically his own.

Priests, Cardinals, clowns and waiters, grotesque nudes, debutantes and eager society girls wearing pearl necklaces, whether alone or assembled into orgiastic groups, all stare in confrontation out of his pictures. Condo has described his portraits as composites of various psychological states painted in different ways, reflecting the madness of everyday life. They often fuse cartoon figures and human forms into a state of metamorphosis, each simultaneously reflecting a plethora of emotions and gestures; a scream and a laugh within a single expression. Sculptures too, and drawings continue this investigation of the macabre, the carnivalesque and the abject, as well as apparently abstract painting compositions from which the familiar physiognomies of Condo’s players emerge and into which they return.