EXCLUSIVE: Lari Pittman draws connections between aesthetics and feelings of safety, at his home and cactus garden in Los Angeles.
An exhibition of Pittman’s latest paintings opens Friday, October 24th at Barbara Gladstone Gallery in New York, and is on view through November 30th. From the press release:
In his new body of work, Pittman explores the tradition of vanitas painting, which came to fruition in Northern Europe, particularly the Dutch and Flemish regions, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Taken from the Latin meaning emptiness, these still life paintings usually incorporated skulls, burning candles, cut flowers and other objects that mark the passage of time and the transience of life. Pittman structures his modern-day nature morte around diaphanous bubbles, frying eggs, vegetables, splashing kettles, and strings of light bulbs. His day-glo cornucopias, equally warm portraits of domestic life, take on a more thoughtful aspect when seen as arrangements made for a fleeting life.
And a preview of the installation:
Inspired by commercial advertising, folk art, and decorative traditions, Lari Pittman’s meticulously layered paintings transform pattern and signage into luxurious scenes. Meditations on romantic love, violence, and mortality, his work demonstrates the complementary nature of beauty and suffering, pain and pleasure. In a manner both visually gripping and psychologically strange, Pittman’s hallucinatory works reference myriad aesthetic styles, from Victorian silhouettes to social realist murals to Southwestern kitsch.
SEE: More images, videos, and news for Lari Pittman.
LEARN: Lari Pittman is featured in the Season 4 (2007) episode Romance of the Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS.
DISCUSS: What do you think about this video? Leave a comment!
PHOTO | Lari Pittman, October 24 – November 29, 2008. Exhibition View: Gladstone Gallery, New York. Photos by David Regen. Copyright Lari Pittman. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York
VIDEO | Producer: Susan Sollins & Nick Ravich. Camera: Bob Elfstrom. Sound: Ray Day. Editor: Mark Sutton.
