Lari Pittman and Silke Otto-Knapp
KCRW profiles the collaborative show by two department of art professors
Professors, artists, and now collaborators. Lari Pittman and Silke Otto-Knapp launch exhibition "Subject, Predicate, Object," at Regen Projects through May 27.
"Lari Pittman has a lengthy history of looking to ideas and motifs that have faded from popularity. The LA-based artist is credited with being one of the painters to resuscitate enthusiasm for a decorative language without losing serious, even sobering, content. Vivid colors and baroque compositions define his style.
In his latest exhibition at Regen Projects in Hollywood, Pittman looks to the endangered medium of books in Subject, Predicate, Object. Entering the gallery, an angled white table of architectural proportions, designed by architect Michael Maltzan, supports ten books, each lavishly bound in leaf green, ruby red, charcoal gray and other inviting colors. Collectively called "A History of Human Nature," each volume has 10 or 12 paintings. In the show, each book is open to one intricately executed work on paper by Pittman on the right hand page and a title on the left.
The green book begins with The Nature of Reverie. The complex composition shows what might be a small plump dog wearing a little pink hat or perhaps it is a statue or simply a fantasy? Resting on a pedestal, it is surrounded by loosely articulated gourds, feathers, leaves, candlesticks, delicate arabesques and mottled patterns of black and white dots. Layered and complex, the pictures are not narrative but each characterizes what the artist describes as a particular condition: melodrama, hallucination, hysteria, enervation, onanism, neurasthenia, melancholia, trauma or panic. Each is accompanied by its own painting and each book contains similarly complex musings." —Hunter Drohojowska-Philp, Apr. 27, 2017
Read the full article at the KCRW website.