LARI PITTMAN, Curiosities from a Late Western Impaerium, 2014
cel-vinyl and spray paint on gessoed paper, 70 works, each: 22.13 x 18.13 inches (framed), 56.2 x 46.1 cm © Lari Pittman. Courtesy Lehmann Maupin, New York and Seoul.
Curated by Rochelle Steiner, Magic Realism features more than 30 paintings and drawings created by celebrated Los Angeles-based painter Lari Pittman over the past 12 years. The exhibition underscores the artist’s ongoing exploration in themes related to modern life, including regeneration and optimistic renewal in 21st century society. Onthis occasion, works from six key series will be brought together for the first time: Thought-Forms (2012); Nocturnes (2015); Iris Shots Opening and Closing (2020); Diorama and Vanitas (2021); Luminous: Cities with Egg Monuments (2022); and Sparkling City With Egg Monuments (2023). The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated publication with new texts about the artist and his work, in English and Mandarin.
“I am honored that my work is being shown at The Long Museum in Shanghai,”said Pittman.“The Long Museum has championed my work over the years and I am grateful for their support in mounting such an ambitious exhibition in Asia. This exhibition is special for me because it will showcase many works which haven’t been exhibited before alongside important paintings, including six paintings from the Long Museum collection. I am excited to see my work within the context of the type of contemporary cityscape that has inspired me throughout my career.”
LARI PITTMAN, thought-form of the precipice between enlightenment and despair, 2012
cel-vinyl, spray enamel on canvas over wood panel, 102 x 88 inches, 259.1 x 223.5 cm
© Lari Pittman. Courtesy Lehmann Maupin, New York and Seoul.
LARI PITTMAN, Mutualism, 2011
acrylic, cel-vinyl, and aerosol lacquer on gessoed canvas over panel, 102 x 88 inches, 259.1 x 223.5 cm
© Lari Pittman. Courtesy Lehmann Maupin, New York and Seoul.
Throughout his illustrious four-decade career, Pittman has developed a distinct visual language that has established him as one of the most significant painters of our generation. Pittman’s signature, densely-layered painting style includes a lexicon of signs and symbols, a compilation of varied painting techniques, unique color combinations, and a clear homage to the handmade, craft, and the decorative. Pittman has had numerous solo and group exhibitions around the world including a major retrospective at the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles in 2019 that was accompanied by an expansive publication. His work has also been included in the Whitney Biennial (1993, 1995,1997), Documenta (1997), and the Venice Biennale (2003), among other acclaimed shows.
LARI PITTMAN, Found Buried #2, 2020
cel-vinyl and lacquer spray over gessoed canvas on titanium and wood panel
79.8 x 96.5 x 2 inches, 202.6 x 245.1 x 5.1 cm
© Lari Pittman. Courtesy Lehmann Maupin, New York and Seoul.
LARI PITTMAN, Found Buried #8, 2020
cel-vinyl and lacquer spray over gessoed canvas on titanium and wood panel
79.8 x 96.5 x 2 inches, 202.6 x 245.1 x 5.1 cm
© Lari Pittman. Courtesy Lehmann Maupin, New York and Seoul.
In Magic Realism, the visual motif of eggs, which has appeared in Pittman’s work since the mid-1980s, is seen consistently. The forms are integrated into nightscapes and cityscapes; they appear as monuments and as part of nature scenes, ready to hatch into life. Eggs are part of the artist’s utopian perspective: a feminist and generative vision of the world rooted in the exuberance of life. Filled with eggs in a variety of sizes and guises, these paintings serve as love letters to the possibilities of life in the twenty-first century, including optimism and renewal.
“Lari Pittman's work reflects the exuberance of eras past and homes for future worlds,”said Steiner, curator of the exhibition.“His complex imagery brings ordered structures to contemporary ideas, which are presented through unique colors and forms. Lari’s work has left an indelible mark on the history of art, inspiring so many of his peers as well as a younger generation of artists, and it has been a true pleasure to work with him on his first museum survey in Asia.”
LARI PITTMAN, Vanitas #2 (Aeternum), 2021
cel-vinyl and lacquer spray over gessoed canvas on titanium and wood panel
56 x 74 inches, 142.2 x 188 cm
© Lari Pittman. Courtesy Lehmann Maupin, New York and Seoul.
LARI PITTMAN, Vanitas #1, 2021
cel-vinyl and lacquer spray over gessoed canvas on titanium and wood panel
80 x 96 inches, 203.2 x 243.8 cm
© Lari Pittman. Courtesy Lehmann Maupin, New York and Seoul.
Highlights from the exhibition include selections from Pittman’s recent bodies of work Luminous: Cities with Egg Monuments and Sparkling Cities with Egg Monuments, which were presented at Lehmann Maupin Gallery in Seoul (2022) and in New York (2023), respectively. Created during the global pandemic between 2020-2022, these bodies of work include a number of monumentally scaled paintings that are characterized by the artist’s unique visual aesthetic containing dense, interwoven imagery in vibrant colors. His paintings have consistently explored topics including life, death, love, sex, consumerism, and capitalism. Here, Pittman approaches such themes through the lens of isolation and rebirth, looking both backward and forward in time. The history of decoration is another key element in Pittman’s work, deployed not only for visual patterning but as subject matter itself. Here, it appears as complex ornamentation and a consideration of aesthetics.
LARI PITTMAN, Sparkling City With Egg Monuments #3, 2023
Signed on verso, acrylic and lacquer spray on gessoed canvas over wood panel
96 x 80 x 2 inches, 243.8 x 203.2 x 5.1 cm
© Lari Pittman. Courtesy Lehmann Maupin, New York and Seoul.
LARI PITTMAN, Sparkling City With Egg Monuments #6, 2023
Signed on verso, acrylic and lacquer spray on gessoed canvas over wood panel
96 x 80 x 2 inches, 243.8 x 203.2 x 5.1 cm
© Lari Pittman. Courtesy Lehmann Maupin, New York and Seoul.
The works on view also demonstrate the conceptual strategies and rigor that underpin Pittman’s process. In each work, he begins with the title and then maps visual structure, which he refers to as the work’s architecture; from there, he populates his canvases with imagery related to his thematic concerns. Recently, Pittman has presented meditations on modern life, ranging from isolation to abundance. His otherworldly settings are suggestive of the urbanity of cityscapes and the idiosyncrasies of nature. Teeming with life and visual excess, the canvases on view in Magic Realism invite viewers to fantasize about the exuberance and hope for the future.
About the Artist
Portrait of Lari Pittman. © Lari Pittman. Courtesy Lehmann Maupin, New York and Seoul. Photo by Brian Guido.
Over the course of his decades-long career, Lari Pittman (b. 1952, Los Angeles, CA, lives and works in Los Angeles, CA) has developed a unique visual aesthetic that has established him as one of the most significant painters of his generation. Pittman’s signature, densely-layered painting style includes a lexicon of signs and symbols (such as bells, eggs, animals, and ropes), a compilation of varied painting techniques, and a clear homage to the handmade, craft, and the decorative. Pittman creates complex compositions that mediate the tension between color, text, and imagery; landscape and decoration; and chaos and order with remarkable dexterity and often on a large scale, and the artist has an innate ability to create compositions in which each element within a painting is given equal space and significance.
In the mid-1970s, Pittman attended California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California, completing a B.F.A. and an M.F.A. The Institute’s strong feminist arts program challenged the devaluation of art forms traditionally associated with women, and it was partially as a result of his engagement with this program that Pittman developed an interest in undermining aesthetic hierarchies and embracing the decorative arts. Pittman’s strong affinity for the decorative can be seen throughout his numerous bodies of work, and it has contributed to his singular visual style. While Pittman’s early works were informed by the socio-political struggle resulting from the peak of the AIDS epidemic, racial discord, and LGBTQ+civil rights struggles that defined the last two decades of the 20th century, his later paintings evince a shift in focus towards interior spaces, including domestic and psychological subjects.
Solo exhibitions of his work have been organized at Museo Jumex, Mexico City, Mexico (2022); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2019); The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, CA (2016); Le Consortium, Dijon, France (2013); Museum of Contemporary Art St. Louis, St. Louis, MO (2013); Villa Arson, Nice, France (2005); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA (1996); Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX (1996); Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C. (1997); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA (1996); and University Art Museum, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA (1996), among others.
Select group exhibitions featuring Pittman’s work include COPY PASTE, Kistefos Museum, Jevnaker, Norway (2023); Chapter Three, Amore Pacific Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea (2021); Invisible Sun, The Broad, Los Angeles, CA (2021); Duro Olowu: Seeing Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL (2020); 50 + 50: A Creative Century from Chouinard to CalArts, REDCAT, Los Angeles, CA (2020); Waking Dream, Ruby City, San Antonio, TX (2019); Less Is a Bore: Maximalist Art & Design, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA (2019); Give a Damn., the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY (2018); The Long Run, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (2017); Between Two Worlds: Art of California, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), San Francisco, CA (2017); Inaugural Installation, The Broad, Los Angeles, CA, (2015); The Art of Our Time, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA (2015); Art AIDS America, West Hollywood Library and One Archives Gallery and Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2015), Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA (2015), Zuckerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw, GA (2016), the Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, NY (2016), Alphawood Gallery, Chicago, IL (2017); America is Hard to See, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2015); Earthly Delights, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL (2014); and Comic Future, Ballroom Marfa, Marfa, TX (2013), Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH, (2014). Pittman has participated in multiple biennial exhibitions, including documenta X, Kassel, Germany (1997) and the 1997, 1995, 1993, and 1985 Whitney Biennial exhibitions.
About the Exhibition
Dates: August 16 – October 20, 2024
Venue: Long Museum, Shanghai
Courtesy of Long Museum, edited by CAFA ART INFO.
