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Monster mash …
George Condo’s cartoonish monsters always look as if they are trapped in their own anarchy. Created under lockdown in New York State, Parallel Lives is typical, with its estranged couple with too many eyes and mouths. There are teeth like piano keys everywhere, their dental pattern repeating in multiple mad smiles and irises. It’s a hot-diggity mix of the desiring and devouring, aggression and the ridiculous.
We’re jammin’ …
Condo is renowned for “jam sessions” with art-historical references, including the way his hero Picasso channelled mental conflict with fragmented facial features. While the modernist great addressed deep subjects such as war, here the psychological scars are mixed up with a pop sensibility. The Mickey Mouse ears are a signature feature.
Beautiful freak …
Condo’s imaginary “portraits” include mad clowns, butlers, superheroes, bankers and occasionally real people such as the Queen. Yet he is as renowned for his old masterly handling of paint as for his subject matter, mixing the virtuoso with the perverse. Small wonder Kanye West used Condo’s paintings for multiple covers of his album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.
The right notes …
Music is more than a soundtrack to making paintings for Condo, who studied music theory alongside art history. He has compared the tempo changes of painting and drawing to those in performances by Jimi Hendrix and classical pianist Glenn Gould.
Only the lonely …
Now that the modern alienation Condo mines has become literal, he has turned to drawing as an appropriate medium for this moment. “It’s a private activity you do when nobody is watching,” he says. “But here we are in a situation where nobody could possibly be watching because we’re all quarantined.”
Together apart …
While sex always feels pretty base in Condo’s work, it is nonetheless born of a primal desire to connect with other humans. In this new series of drawings, couples are linked by rhythmic lines, like looping thoughts or music. As he says: “They don’t want to be [distant from each other] but they have to be.” Whether they’re long-lashed and sultry or popping and staring, the eyes never match – nor do they meet.
George Condo: Drawings for Distanced Figures is online at hauserwirth.com
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