MY MAGICAL ATTIC: GEORGE CONDO: PEOPLE ARE STRANGE AT HAUSER & WIRTH WEST HOLLYWOOD

GEORGE CONDO: PEOPLE ARE STRANGE AT HAUSER & WIRTH WEST HOLLYWOOD

15 February 2023 – 22 April 2023

Los Angeles...On 15 February, Hauser and Wirth is pleased to announce that George Condo will inaugurate the newly established West Hollywood gallery with his first exhibition in LA in nearly five years.

With the exhibition’s title ‘People Are Strange,’ taken from the hit 1967 song of the same name by legendary – and quintessentially Los Angeles – band The Doors, Condo’s latest canvases are filled with fragmented portraits and abstractions. In these large-scale works, the artist renders layered, vibrating planes, lines and geometries that suggest a world of oppositional forces and states, at once solemn and euphoric, connected and entropic, logical and ineffable, beautiful and ugly. In their ability to convey deep contradictions through Condo’s mastery of the medium of painting, the canvases on view painted in New York City over the past year and a half are a reconstructive body of work involving both harsh lines and melodic painterly passages – and which characterize the dividing forces of modern life everywhere.

Condo has said that the exhibition’s title, ‘People Are Strange,’ references ‘the effect of the divisive politics of our time that have created a fractured society. In these works I put together the broken pieces and fragmented aspects of that division to intentionally point out the question: is it that people are strange or is it the politicians that are in fact strange, thus resulting in a maelstrom of dehumanized and disenchanted people who as a result have become strange….even to themselves.’

‘People Are Strange’ offers impressions of the strange world around him and, in doing so, captures something universal about the transforming effects of time’s passage as it pertains to the time-lapse we have all lived through during the pandemic.

Exhibition details

Filling the sweeping expanse of Hauser & Wirth’s new West Hollywood gallery, housed in a 1930s Spanish Colonial Revival building redolent of Hollywood’s Golden Age, the works on view present Condo’s latest explorations in scale and the painterly process. While seemingly disparate upon first glance, these new paintings are united by a central theme of transformation: they succeed in representing temporality both in the built-up, layered stages of their construction, and in the chimerical effects of the figures that inhabit them. Each work embodies its own logical chaos, at once disorderly and intact, which speaks to the fractured nature of our contemporary moment and indirectly references the ever-changing conflicts in the world. According to Condo, the artist is uniquely equipped to translate the ineffable effects of time, acknowledging that ‘the transformation of society and people is something we all feel but that a painter can actually show.’

A centerpiece of the exhibition, the large-scale triptych ‘Transformation’ (2022) will be visible to passersby through the large plate glass windows that front the gallery’s storied stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard. The frenetic energy of the work is echoed in this vivid tableau, which features a frenzied picture of undulating forms punctuated by the interaction of figures coalescing and diverging on the surface of the canvas. Condo’s subject is the effects of increasing isolation that pulls individuals away from one another, fraying and fracturing community and society. The amount of time required to create such a work – the ongoing process of laying down line and color, and of removing, adding, repeating the process – is more consuming than the final images might suggest. Time itself thus becomes a material and a central theme of the show.

Inspired by the way literature can track the passage of time and its effects on the reader, Condo has created a trio of large-scale portraits of female muses, erudite and canonical. Each of these is dominated by a color that conveys mood with an iconographic intensity. For example, ‘Transitional Portrait in Turquoise and Gold’ (2022) depicts within its single frame, where the image is read from left to right, the collapsing of time in the passage of a life. The effect of the work is that of a time-lapse film. Condo observes, ‘The irony is, that as we age, we get younger in our minds and spirits, even though the external view of us is completely different than what’s in our heads. The tragic and the beautiful come together when perceived from the perspective of the viewer.’

Condo’s embrace of the possibilities of paint to record the passage of time is further extended into three-dimensional form with the debut of the new sculpture ‘Constellation II’ (2022). A variation of ‘Constellation for Voices’ (2019), his monumental 11-foot-tall sculpture installed at Lincoln Center in New York City, this work similarly comprises a multifaceted gold head that fuses human and alien parts into a single composition – a dialectical harmonization of differing forms. Simultaneously evoking ancient deities and modern man, ‘Constellation II’ collages a group of angles and forms together in a such way that the final fixed object vibrates as if animated. By reaching for an effect that the artist describes as ‘spatial and ethereal and galactic,’ ‘Constellation II’ presents viewers with the notion that limitlessness and a lack of fixity are, for better and for worse, the human condition.

Concurrent with the exhibition at Hauser & Wirth West Hollywood, the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City will present ‘Entrance to the Mind: Drawings by George Condo,’ featuring 28 works on paper that provide a unique overview of Condo’s drawing practice over the last 45 years. This March in Europe, an exhibition titled ‘Humanoids,’ curated by Didier Ottinger, will be held at the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco – Villa Paloma.

TRANSITIONAL PORTRAIT IN TURQUOSE AND GOLD 2022

Acrylic and Metallic Paint and oil stick on Linen

Dimensions: 300.7 ×267.3×3.8 cm.

PSYCO 2022

Oil on Linen

Dimensions: 228.6 ×215.9 cm.

FEMME FATALE 2022

Oil on Linen

Dimensions: 215.9 ×228.6 cm.

TRANSITIONAL PORTRAIT IN BLUE AND WHITE 2022

Acrylic and Oil stick on Linen

Dimensions: 300.4 ×267.3×3.2 cm.

THE RUNAWAY 2022

Oil on Linen

Dimensions: 215.9 ×228.6 cm.

ABSTRACT PORTRAIT COMPOSITION 2022

Oil on Linen

Dimensions: 217.2 ×228.6 cm.

CONSTELLATION 2022
Aluminium, Gold Leaf
Ed. of 10, 2 AP
78.7 x 55.3 x 52.7 cm

HAUSER & WIRTH WEST HOLLYWOOD

ABOUT HAUSER & WIRTH

Hauser & Wirth was founded in 1992 in Zurich by Iwan Wirth, Manuela Wirth and Ursula Hauser, who were joined in 2000 by Partner and President Marc Payot and CEO Ewan Venters in 2020. A family business with a global outlook, Hauser & Wirth has expanded over the past 30 years to include outposts in Hong Kong, London, New York, Southampton, Los Angeles, Somerset, Menorca, Monaco, Zurich, Gstaad, and St. Moritz. The gallery represents over 90 artists and estates who have been instrumental in shaping its identity, and who are the inspiration for Hauser & Wirth’s diverse range of activities that engage with art, education, conservation, and sustainability.

Hauser & Wirth has built a reputation for its dedication to artists and support of visionary artistic projects worldwide. In addition to presenting a dynamic schedule of exhibitions, the gallery collaborates with renowned curators to present museum quality surveys and invests considerable resources in new scholarship and research. Since its earliest days, the gallery has mounted historically significant exhibitions. The inaugural exhibition in 1992 took place at Hauser & Wirth’s first gallery, located in the first-floor apartment of an Art Deco villa in the heart of Zurich; it united mobiles and gouaches by Alexander Calder with sculptures and paintings by Joan Miró. Since then, the gallery has continued to forge an academically rigorous, ambitious program of historic exhibitions, providing a natural home for a number of major 20th-century European and American artist estates, and encouraging a continued and engaging discourse around their oeuvres. These include Louise Bourgeois, The Estate of Philip Guston, The Eva Hesse Estate, Allan Kaprow Estate, Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, The Estate of Jason Rhoades, Dieter Roth Estate and The Estate of David Smith.

https://www.hauserwirth.com/about/

HAUSER & WIRTH WEST HOLLYWOOD

DREAMSCAPE 2022

Oil and Wax Crayon on Linen

Dimensions: 216.5 ×228.9 ×3.2 cm.

SNOWSTORM 2022

Acrylic Oil Stick and Metallic Paint on Linen

Dimensions: 208.3 ×213.4 cm.

AM I HUMAN ? 2022

Oil on Linen

Dimensions: 215.9 ×228.6 cm.

INTERACTION 2022

Oil on Linen

Dimensions: 215.9 ×228.6 cm.

INSANITY 2022

Oil and Crayon on Linen

Dimensions: 215.9 ×228.6 cm.

HEAVY METAL PROFILE 2022

Oil on Linen

Dimensions: 215.9 ×228.6 cm.

TRANSFORMATION 2022

Acrylic Oil Stick and Metallic Paint on Linen

Dimensions: 228.6 ×647.7 cm.

TRANSITIONAL PORTRAIT IN PINK AND GREEN 2022

Acrylic and Metallic Paint and Oil Stick on Linen

Dimensions: 300 ×266.7×3.2 cm.

GEORGE CONDO

Born in Concord, New Hampshire in 1957, George Condo lives and works in New York City. He studied Art History and Music Theory at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell, where he became particularly inspired by a course on Baroque and Rococo painting. He moved to Boston and played in a punk band, ‘The Girls;’ relocated to New York, where he worked as a printer for Andy Warhol; and spent a year studying Old Master glazing techniques in Los Angeles. During his first trip to Europe in 1983, Condo connected with the anarchic Mülheimer Freiheit group in Cologne which included painters Jiri Georg Dokoupil and Walter Dahn.

Condo would soon go on to spend a decade in Europe: in 1985 he moved to Paris and did not return to New York permanently until 1995, with the birth of his second child. During this period, Condo invented his hallmark ‘artificial realism’ and made his first foray into sculpture. Firmly rooted back in New York, he received his first major award, the Academy Award in Art from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, in 1999, followed by the Francis J. Greenberger Award in 2005. Further accolades for this constant innovator would follow: Condo was a 2013 honoree of the New York Studio School alongside writer Musa Mayer and poet Bill Berkson, and BOMB Magazine’s 2018 Anniversary Gala Honoree.

Condo had his first solo show in 1983 at the Ulrike Kantor Gallery in Los Angeles. Since then, his work has appeared in a number of solo exhibitions. In 2017 a retrospective of Condo’s works on paper, ‘The Way I Think,’ traveled internationally from The Phillips Collection, Washington DC to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark. In a large-scale exhibition one year prior, ‘Confrontation’ at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Museum Berggruen in Berlin, Germany, work by Condo was presented alongside some of his major art historical reference points: masterpieces by Cézanne, Picasso, Matisse, Klee, and Giacometti. Condo’s portraiture was the subject of the 2011 – 2012 ‘Mental States,’ a mid-career survey exhibition which traveled from the New Museum, New York to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands, Hayward Gallery, London, United Kingdom, and Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany; and the 2005 ‘One Hundred Women. Retrospective’ shown at the Museum of Modern Art, Salzburg, Austria, and Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany.

In addition to appearing in solo and group exhibitions, Condo’s work has been honored with inclusion in Biennials in the United States and abroad. In 2019 he participated in the 58th Venice Biennale’s ‘May You Live In Interesting Times.’ His work was also exhibited in the Venice Biennale six years prior, in 2013. Other biennials in which Condo has participated include the 13th Biennale de Lyon in 2015, the 10th Gwangju Biennale in 2014, the 2010 and 1987 iterations of the Whitney Biennial, and the 48th Corcoran Biennial in Washington DC in 2005. Condo’s work can be found in renowned public collections internationally, including: Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada; Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Norway; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; Dakis Joannou Collection Foundation, Athens, Greece; Museu d’Art Contemporani, Barcelona, Spain; Staedel Museum, Frankfurt, Germany; Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom; The Broad Collection, Los Angeles CA; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York NY; The Museum of Modern Art, New York NY; The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York NY; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY.

https://www.hauserwirth.com/artists/26942-george-condo/?_gl=1*1ghfyww*_ga*MTc0NDAyMjcxOC4xNjc3MDU4MTI5*_ga_X89F55YL1M*MTY3NzA1ODE0NC4xLjEuMTY3NzA1ODU1Ni42MC4wLjA.

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February 24, 2023

GEORGE CONDO: PEOPLE ARE STRANGE AT HAUSER & WIRTH WEST HOLLYWOOD