黑料不打烊


Lari Pittman: Curiosities from a Late Western Impaerium

Mar 13, 2014 - Apr 16, 2014
Gladstone Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Lari Pittman, his first at our Brussels location. Best known for his brightly colored, densely layered works, which combine readymade iconography and his own symbolic language, Pittman draws on the art historical tradition of painting, while simultaneously overturning conventional notions of perspective, subject matter, and composition. The result is a body of dazzling, intricately crafted work, shaped by a collision of figurative imagery and abstract, geometric forms.
Curiosities from a Late Western Impaerium will feature a series of eighty-two works on paper, framed individually, but exhibited together in groups, evoking a Renaissance-style Wunderkammer, or cabinet of curiosities. Pittman often arranges his works thematically, and this exhibition will reflect that interest, as the works will be displayed in distinct groupings of 鈥渃uriosities,鈥 displayed in carefully selected arrangements, or 鈥渃abinets.鈥 As with a traditional cabinet of wonders, the exhibition will explore subject matter as diverse as brain scans, manifestos and political posters, needlepoints with antidepressants, snow globes with dead architecture, highway signs warning of cannibalism, and genetically engineered plant life, presenting the works as specimens to be scrutinized and examined.  Taken together, the works reveal a loose narrative thread that weaves together elements from the past with those from our contemporary reality, exploring the way history is constructed, categorized, and defined, and presenting a vision of history defined by the inventions, discoveries, and quotidian minutiae that compose everyday life.
Pittman鈥檚 formal practice is rooted in a visual vocabulary tied to the art historical tradition of painting, and through his distinctly contemporary works, Pittman proposes a new vision for creating a modern incarnation of the history painting. His works contain a formal and conceptual tension, revealed through the interplay of layered imagery and abstract forms, which encourage the viewer to engage with the works from multiple perspectives. As Pittman says, 鈥淐ertainly the dynamic motion in a Pittman painting stimulates in me the itch to capture, and yet the act of capture remains suspended.鈥 This sense of being and becoming is articulated in Pittman鈥檚 multi-faceted works through his deft incorporation of cultural signifiers from disparate time periods and international locales.

Gladstone Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Lari Pittman, his first at our Brussels location. Best known for his brightly colored, densely layered works, which combine readymade iconography and his own symbolic language, Pittman draws on the art historical tradition of painting, while simultaneously overturning conventional notions of perspective, subject matter, and composition. The result is a body of dazzling, intricately crafted work, shaped by a collision of figurative imagery and abstract, geometric forms.
Curiosities from a Late Western Impaerium will feature a series of eighty-two works on paper, framed individually, but exhibited together in groups, evoking a Renaissance-style Wunderkammer, or cabinet of curiosities. Pittman often arranges his works thematically, and this exhibition will reflect that interest, as the works will be displayed in distinct groupings of 鈥渃uriosities,鈥 displayed in carefully selected arrangements, or 鈥渃abinets.鈥 As with a traditional cabinet of wonders, the exhibition will explore subject matter as diverse as brain scans, manifestos and political posters, needlepoints with antidepressants, snow globes with dead architecture, highway signs warning of cannibalism, and genetically engineered plant life, presenting the works as specimens to be scrutinized and examined.  Taken together, the works reveal a loose narrative thread that weaves together elements from the past with those from our contemporary reality, exploring the way history is constructed, categorized, and defined, and presenting a vision of history defined by the inventions, discoveries, and quotidian minutiae that compose everyday life.
Pittman鈥檚 formal practice is rooted in a visual vocabulary tied to the art historical tradition of painting, and through his distinctly contemporary works, Pittman proposes a new vision for creating a modern incarnation of the history painting. His works contain a formal and conceptual tension, revealed through the interplay of layered imagery and abstract forms, which encourage the viewer to engage with the works from multiple perspectives. As Pittman says, 鈥淐ertainly the dynamic motion in a Pittman painting stimulates in me the itch to capture, and yet the act of capture remains suspended.鈥 This sense of being and becoming is articulated in Pittman鈥檚 multi-faceted works through his deft incorporation of cultural signifiers from disparate time periods and international locales.

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Grote Hertstraat 12 Rue du Grand Cerf Brussels, Belgium 1000

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