For the past few decades, since emerging in New York’s East Village scene alongside the likes of Jean Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, George Condo has continued to prod and play with what painting can do. Condo’s new works are currently on show in Skarstedt gallery in NY; and see the artist working on paper on a vast scale to present pieces that look to navigate the tricky terrain of the relationship between our internal psyche and external, physical body. Using multiple layers of gesso, ink washes and metallic paints, these continue his interest in “psychological cubism”—a term the artist coined himself to describe his use of various techniques and influences to represent people’s emotional lives. The cubist multiple perspectives hint at the multiplicity of mind-states that occur simultaneously; veering from joy to horror and anything in between. Our highlight of this new, 2019 series is Fashion Model (sadly the scale of the piece isn’t really palpable here, but trust us, it’s a whopper); and feels like a rare burst of humour and hopefulness. The show runs until 21 December 2019.
