LARI PITTMAN: New Paintings and Orangerie

This is a great show! I have the pleasure of knowing Lari and I was blown away by the amount of work in his retrospective, Orangierie, that barely show's a fingers worth of his body of work. Lari's work is so colorful, and full of whimsy, yet it has a depth that you continue to follow, tracing the lines of all the images and designs within the work. The new paintings are really engaging. You can see the current influence of new visions and concepts he's embraced. I found this excerpt from Robert Storr on the galleries press release and I couldn't have said it better. Quote: "That Pittman has proudly camped up his art yet despite its fizz has stayed true to a gentle nature that has inflected his art from the outset, and that he does so still even as the mood of his work has visibly darkened while becoming more arcane, more brittle, suggest that Sontag's observation that "in naïve, or pure, Camp, the essential element is seriousness, a seriousness that fails" can be reversed by an artist, such as Pittman, who is not all naïve, and result in a flighty or decorative art that succeeds in speaking the truth where seriousness cannot, and so in its apparent superficiality replaces seriousness as the vehicle for meaning and feeling." (Robert Storr in Lari Pittman, published by Rizzoli, 2011)

If you get the chance (closes Oct. 23) check out the show in both galleries. It's well worth the trip.

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