Lari Pittman | Craft
EXCLUSIVE: Lari Pittman painting Palace (2006) in his Los Angeles studio.
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, Palace, and detail, 2006. Photos by Douglas M. Parker Studio. Courtesy the artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles.
VIDEO | Producer: Susan Sollins & Nick Ravich. Camera: Bob Elfstrom. Sound: Ray Day. Editor: Mark Sutton. Artwork courtesy: Lari Pittman.
LA Weekly’s Pittmania
Doug Harvey of LA Weekly was dazzled by Season 4 artist Lari Pittman’s recent show at Regen Projects in Los Angeles.
“Pittman‚Äôs work still grabs, holds, orchestrates and choreographs attention in ways that are both highly pleasurable and instructive to the eye. This apparent return to his late-‚Äô80s abstract indeterminacy manages to fold in all the robust formal experimentation and noir content of the intervening years, while freeing the work from its culture-specific moorings. In a career that resembles a virtuosic balancing act, Pittman‚Äôs new work is a dazzling conflation of a hard-wired populism and conservative elitism (in the best, nurturing sense) that raises the stakes to a global level,” Harvey writes.
Read the full “Pittmania ‘07″ article here and learn more about the exhibition here.
Originally published in LA Weekly via Artkrush.
Art21 Artists’ Talks Tonight, Coast to Coast
In a perhaps unprecedented twist in the history of Art21 public programs, three Season 4 featured artists will be speaking at various cultural institutions tonight in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and New York City.
Painter Lari Pittman, profiled in Romance, will talk at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) at 7pm in the Bing Theater, following a screening of this episode. Mark Dion will participate in a panel at the Tyler School of Art at Temple University (in the Engineering and Architecture building’s Lecture Hall, Room 126) along with curator Sheryl Conkelton and artist/Tyler Professor Winifred Lutz, moderated by art historian Philip Glahn. Select artists’ segments will also be screened. Finally, Mark Bradford, featured in the Season 4 episode Paradox, will converse with Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator at the Studio Museum in Harlem at 7pm.
All of these events are free. For more information on Lari Pittman’s talk, visit LACMA’s site here. Email Jennie Shanker, Tyler’s Foundation Dept Chair at shanker@temple.edu about the panel discussion featuring Mark Dion. And reservations are recommended for Mark Bradford’s screening at the Studio Museum. Call 212-864-3500 to reserve a space.
Event photos: Art21 at MoMA 10-2-07
Last night Art21 hosted a private screening of Romance at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. A lively panel, featuring MoMA Chief Curator of Film Rajendra Roy as moderator, in discussion with Art21 Executive Producer & Curator Susan Sollins, and Season 4 Romance artists Laurie Simmons, Judy Pfaff, and Lari Pittman, followed the film.
Be sure not to miss Judy Pfaff speaking at SculptureCenter tonight at 7:00pm, along with the first public NYC screening of Romance.
See more pictures from the MoMA event and others at Art21’s Access ‘07 group on Flickr here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/art21-access07/.
Also opening in LA tonight: Lari Pittman at Regen Projects
Tonight, Regen Projects in Los Angeles unveils an exhibition of new paintings and works on paper by Season 4 artist Lari Pittman. This show presents seven large-scale paintings, three mid-size paintings, and 17 works on paper. Pittman’s operatic, intricate, multi-layered works synthesize figuration and abstraction to create a unique vocabulary. Each work is composed as a web of interconnections, overlays, and interlockings that resonate on both a visual and conceptual level. The meanings that unfold are emotional, social, philosophical, and above all else, intensely personal.
Pittman’s works are a visual stimulation that seduces and unsettles both the eye and the psyche. In his compositions, images are not arranged traditionally around a central focus. Rather, they are placed expansively - essential elements run laterally across the surface, or dot the perimeter, or sprawl in a dazzling array all over. The surface of the works is multifaceted and the image field appears to be constantly shifting and reinventing itself. This visual cacophony is not accidental but carefully calculated with acute attention to formal properties and rooted in Pittman’s own discourse with the history of modernist painting.
Watch an exclusive clip from Lari Pittman’s Art:21 segment, premiering October 28 on PBS.
Pittman will speak at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) on Thursday, October 4, at a special sneak preview screening of the new episode Romance from Art in the Twenty-First Century Season 4. Read more about the event here.Lari Pittman is on view through October 20, 2007.
Lari Pittman and Mark Bradford in Eden’s Edge at Hammer Museum
Season 4 artists Mark Bradford and Lari Pittman are both featured in the Hammer Museum‚Äôs current survey, Eden’s Edge: Fifteen LA Artists. The show explores art made in Los Angeles during the past decade, crossing generations, media, and materials to link artists who create work ingrained with intensely personal visions. In addition to Bradford and Pittman, the exhibition features Ginny Bishton, Liz Craft, Sharon Ellis, Matt Greene, Elliott Hundley, Stanya Kahn & Harry Dodge, Monica Majoli, Matthew Monahan, Rebecca Morales, Ken Price, Jason Rhoades, Anna Sew Hoy, and Jim Shaw. These artists share a perspective toward landscape and figure that investigates complex contradictions, which are inherent to life in Los Angeles and more broadly to contemporary American culture.
As part of Art21 Access ’07, Art21 is partnering with the Hammer Museum to present a sneak preview of the “Protest” episode from Art in the Twenty-First Century Season 4 on October 3, 2007 at 7 p.m. Also, revisit this blog for a special announcement regarding other Art21 events with Bradford and Pittman in Los Angeles in October.
Eden’s Edge: 15 LA Artists is on view from May 13 - September 2, 2007. For additional images, click here.
