A Day in the Park, George Condo, 2021
George Condo: Ideals of the Unfound Truth
Oct 13 – Dec 23, 2021
Hauser & Wirth
London, UK

Unfolding across the entirety of both the gallery’s London spaces, this exhibition is dedicated exclusively to the works of George Condo, a defining figure of contemporary American painting. The exhibition brings together new drawings and paintings depicting states of mind captured in an abstract web that reveal the humanity inherent within fragmented psyches.

The portraits reflect a range of emotions simultaneously occurring within us, buried deep within our collective subconscious, revealing themselves through the figurative form. Condo has forged a relentlessly inventive path, deploying technical skill and canonical knowledge to channel the painterly modes of American and European art history into works of astonishing originality.

Often the presence of multiple historical moments can be felt in a single work. The new drawings and paintings on show are portraits, not of living individuals but of invented characters, represented in ways that combine various viewpoints to reflect different emotions erupting simultaneously.

Condo describes the figures, in works such as Shadows and Light (2021), as ‘interacting in the shadows’, likening them to the way that light shines through gaps between trees in the forest; this is reflected throughout the exhibition in works such as The Day I Stopped Drinking (2021) where an eye or a mouth can be seen peeping through the thicket of the composition. These characters are partially erased by the deconstructive process of painting.

Condo achieves this effect by first choosing challenging color combinations to draw initial figures and forms, followed by a process of erasure with new layers of paint, thus only allowing certain elements of the original forms to survive. As well as capturing the complex mind of a person, Condo’s portraits have taken on landscape painting qualities, where gestural paint strokes resemble things we might see in the natural world; works in the exhibition such as Escape from Humanity (2021) embody this as mental landscapes in and of themselves.

The process of making art is a way for Condo to resolve these tensions, a form of personal conflict resolution via painting and drawing. Paintings including A Day in the Park (2021) and The Day They All Got Out (2021) display this dialectical paradigm – his harsh lines and colors provide a structure that allows the figurative forms to roam free, as if the lockdown had unleashed a mad rush to escape from shelter. Ultimately, these works are portraits of Condo’s mind, and his intention is that others will see their own minds reflected as well.

OTHER ANNOUNCEMENTS & EVENTS
  • Jimmy DeSana
    Nov 4, 2023 – Jan 6, 2024
    Meyer Riegger
    Berlin, Germany

    The Queer photographer Jimmy DeSana worked in New York from 1973 until his premature death from AIDS-related illness in 1990. No wave music, club culture, performance art, the Pictures Generation, mail art: not only was DeSana a prominent figure in these scenes, he also became a chronicler of Queer New York subculture in the 1970s and 1980s through his photographs. (more…)

  • Impossible Music
    Sep 30 – Dec 10, 2023
    Miller Institute for Contemporary Art
    Pittsburgh, USA

    Opening September 30 at the Miller Institute of Contemporary Art, Impossible Music brings together sounds, scores, sculptures, video, and live performances to extend discourses on conceptual and experimental music and explore its intersections across different art forms. Marking the first joint curatorial collaboration of curator Candice Hopkins, artist, composer Raven Chacon, with curator, researcher, Stavia Grimani, the interdisciplinary group exhibition features work by boundary-defying composers, artists, (more…)