Showing: George Condo – “Entrance to the Void” @ Sprüth Magers (Los Angeles)

Sprüth Magers Gallery in Los Angeles is currently showing Entrance to the Void, a solo by George Condo. On view from the 20th of April until the 11th of June, the exhibition includes a new body of work by the “pioneer of the international revival of figurative painting.”

Revisiting diverse styles that he has used in the past, the show from the NYC-based artist is a comprehensive summary of his progressive stance toward painting. Through individual paintings that represent different visual languages, Condo uses references to his own practice and the classic art influences – from Rembrandt, Velazquez, Fragonard and Picasso, to Cubism, Surrealism, Pop Art and comic books.

A separate series of three paintings pay homage directly to the Spanish painter Francisco de Goya’s The Countess of Carpio, Marquesa de la Solana, by mixing the elements of the original work with abstraction. His celebrated multifaced portraits assembled from fragments of faces and geo shapes are represented with six “psychological cubist” paintings. The rows of teeth, spider-like sets of eyelashes, ‘bugged-out’ eyes, and dense tangles of hair are signature elements of the American artist’s unconventional handling of the portrait genre, all notable on these large canvases. Entrance to the Void marks over three decades of Condo’s work with the gallery since his very first solo show at Monika Sprüth Gallery in Cologne in 1984.

Photo credit: Joshua White.
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