Lot 27 email save

GEORGE CONDO, Mental States (Hiding and Finding), 2

Sign In to see what this sold for

Mental States (Hiding and Finding), 2000
Oil and acrylic on canvas. 60 x 100 in. (152.4 x 254 cm).

PROVENANCE Patrick Painter Inc., Santa Monica; Pace Wildenstein, New York
EXHIBITED Los Angeles, Patrick Painter, Mental States, December 2, 2000 - January 27, 2001
LITERATURE C. Knight, "Paintings Take a Serious Look at Cartoonish Human Nature," LA Times, December 15, 2000, p. E4 (illustrated)

One of the most influential American artists on the international art scene today, George Condo's work synthesizes Cubism, Expressionism and Classicism in a supreme and iconic way. Condo investigates and challenges the nature of portraiture, introducing the language of the Old Masters into Contemporary Art, influencing all generations thereafter. His work provokes through its controversial subject matter guised in classic style. The characters of his subjects are depicted so that their souls are reflected in their features and circumstances. Condo depicts mental states, imagining combinations of features to describe the unconsidered inner life. The present lot, Mental States (Hiding and Finding), 2000, is from a series of semi-abstracted paintings that explore the appearance and physicality of figurative references in a free gestural mode. They depict the aforementioned introspective nature of the human condition, as felt and observed by the artist. Condo explores the mental states of his subjects and moves through the emotions in rhythmic lines that hypnotize the viewers and force them to consider their own inner state. The paintings are both light and dark, peaceful and maddening. The paintings appear as thought processes, as if Condo is working out the complexities of his own condition through an abstracted experience. Mental States (Hiding and Finding) is a kind of inner portrait. Faces suddenly appear in the abstracted lines and are caught between cartoonish and classical representations only to disappear and reappear again through a continuous metamorphosis. The characters endure the chaos of the lines and resurface from the journey, changed by the madness they defeated. The chaotic culture in which the portraits are caught challenges not only the subjects, but also the viewers to question which world is real and which portrait is theirs.

View Phillips de Pury & Company next auction.

Similar lots up for auction