Lari Pittman

London

In an impossible attempt to summarize, or introduce Lari Pittman’s paintings, the writer Klaus Kertess describes them as “splendid enigmas in the desert of mistrust for the imagination’s power”, revelling in a “staggeringly and stunningly detailed hyper-decorative Pop/folk agitation”. (K. Kertess “ The Meaning of Untitled”, in ‘Lari Pittman – Paintings and works on paper’, 2005-2008, New York 2008, p.7)

Significantly Pittman (b. 1952) divides his time between Los Angeles and San Miguel de Allende in central Mexico. He consistently breaks the boundaries of accepted tastes, as if ignoring codes, edges and frontiers of cultures, such as the ones lying between his two countries of choice.

For a body of work that thrives so eruditely on art history (either mainstream, peripheral or folk), it seems to indeed resist all classification into genres and styles, and rather perversely displays symbolist riddles and sensual abandon – what Pittman himself calls “highly perfumed” works.

In the exhibition thought-forms, human figures have almost entirely disappeared. In their place, birds, bells, belts, hanging ropes, shoes (and many more unrecognizable, mysterious motifs), fight and coexist in meticulous chaos. The deceptively rigorous system of lines, frames within frames, cameos and punch-holes slowly shifts and drifts into yet another unchartered territory.

As often, Pittman’s titles seem to hold the key not so much as an explanation of the work, but rather they function as a literal description of what is being presented visually: “thought-form of choreography, classification and spectral experiences”, repeated in six smaller panels; or “thought-form of image patterns revealed at the time of death” and its parent piece, “thought-form of image patterns revealed at the time of birth” for example. Each of Pittman’s ‚thought-form‘ seem to be taking its cues from the ideas laid-out in its title, as if retroactively putting words into images, and as an open-ended invitation to re-imagine the way we look at painting.

Thomas Dane Gallery

October 8th – November 17th, 2012
3 & 11 Duke Street
St James’s
London SW1Y 6BN
UK

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