{"id":387,"date":"2021-03-16T08:28:31","date_gmt":"2021-03-16T00:28:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/?p=387"},"modified":"2021-03-15T11:38:22","modified_gmt":"2021-03-15T03:38:22","slug":"head-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/artist\/head-case\/","title":{"rendered":"HEAD CASE"},"content":{"rendered":"

George Condo<\/a>\u00a0hasn\u2019t written many artist\u2019s statements lately, which isn\u2019t a bad thing. Quite the contrary\u2014most artist statements are dull to read, and read as if they were even duller to write; why they exist at all is a timeless riddle. At this point in his career, Condo presumably does very few things he doesn\u2019t want to do. So the fact that \u201cGeorge Condo: Internal Riot,\u201d at\u00a0Hauser & Wirth<\/a>, came with a few paragraphs courtesy of the man himself suggests that this is no formality; either some publicist is holding a gun to his head, or he\u2019s writing from the heart. A sample: \u201cThe virus turned deadly. . . . The protests were justified. I protested with my paintings. In a psychological sense, I lit them on fire and turned them upside down in revolt and sickness.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Review:<\/div>\n<\/div>
George Condo,\u00a0Father and Daughter with Face Mask<\/em>, 2020, acrylic, pigment stick, metallic paint, and wax crayon on linen, 82 by 80 inches; at Hauser & Wirth.<\/span>COURTESY THE ARTIST AND HAUSER & WIRTH<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

This isn\u2019t the usual BS about topoi and temporalities, but it doesn\u2019t leave me quivering with anticipation, either. My least favorite Condo is \u201crelevant\u201d Condo, the Condo of fish-in-a-barrel social satire and joyless Zeitgeist hunting. His new paintings may not be as on-the-nose as the fat, smirking bankers he began painting during the recession in 2008, but they have that same misplaced confidence. The works in \u201cInternal Riot\u201d (all 2020) depict heads\u2014calling them portraits isn\u2019t quite right\u2014decked out in googly eyes and snaggleteeth. The technique is uneven, but the size and brazenness connote capital-I Importance, and there\u2019s an implicit \u201cYou\u2019re welcome,\u201d as if Condo\u2019s half-assmanship were a response to COVID-19, or Breonna Taylor, or whatever.<\/p>\n

Sickness\u2014every kind\u2014has been a theme of Condo\u2019s work since he started out in the 1980s, but at his best he makes it stick-in-your-throat unsettling. Here, it\u2019s just sick. Compare\u00a0Hysteria\u00a0<\/em>(2020), an extra-crude, Cookie Monster\u2013blue head from the new show, with a vintage Condo like\u00a0Batman and Bunny\u00a0<\/em>(2005), in which the comic book hero poses with a Gorgon-faced\u00a0Playboy<\/em>\u00a0bunny. A few of these paintings\u2019 parts are similar\u2014the glistening eyes, the five-sided grins\u2014but there\u2019s something enthrallingly just out-of-reach in the older work, a dash of technical refinement that makes its horrors easier to choke down, yet no less horrific. It\u2019s\u00a0genuinely<\/em>\u00a0hysterical.\u00a0Hysteria<\/em>, on the other hand, is so screechily self-defining it fades away well before you\u2019re finished looking.<\/p>\n

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\"Review:<\/div>\n<\/div>
George Condo,\u00a0Internal Riot<\/em>, 2020, acrylic, pigment stick, and metallic paint on linen, 82 by 80 inches; at Hauser & Wirth<\/span>COURTESY THE ARTIST AND HAUSER & WIRTH.<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Odd to say about a show called \u201cInternal Riot<\/a>,\u201d but Condo\u2019s new paintings have no subconscious; what you see is pretty much what you get. The show\u2019s drawings, on the other hand, reveal their secrets a little at a time and are much the better for it. The major motifs are the same, but here, Condo works them into dense abstractions, making smart use of negative space and precisely spare color. \u201cSubtle\u201d isn\u2019t the right word for\u00a0Appearances<\/em>, a bright thicket of eyes, teeth, and faces with a dash of Kandinsky to boot, but it takes its time where\u00a0Hysteria\u00a0<\/em>rushes ahead. Condo\u2019s images can be divided into two groups: those that seem to begin with some pop culture artifact we already recognize and then gnaw it apart; and those that seem to begin with scribbles that barely qualify as images but cohere until we almost recognize them. I\u2019m not sure Condo has ever paired these two kinds of images more skillfully than he does in the new drawings\u2014look at the heart-faced beauty at the center of\u00a0Appearances<\/em>, and then look at the cackling monsters all around her. Condo gives us a calm, creeping horror, half coming-together and half coming-apart, and it\u2019s a sharper riposte to his own recent paintings than I can manage.<\/p>\n

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Source\uff1ahttps:\/\/www.artnews.com\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

George Condo\u00a0hasn\u2019t written many artist\u2019s statements lately, which isn\u2019t a bad thing. Quite the contrary\u2014most artist statements are dull to read, and read as if they were even duller to write; why they exist at all is a timeless riddle. At this point in his career, Condo presumably does very few things he doesn\u2019t want […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,13,7,4,3],"tags":[103],"class_list":{"0":"post-387","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artist","8":"category-auction","9":"category-events","10":"category-gallery","11":"category-latest-news","12":"tag-george-condo"},"yoast_head":"\nHEAD CASE - Investable Art Auctioneer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"George Condo hasn\u2019t written many artist\u2019s statements lately, which isn\u2019t a bad thing. 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