Reanimating the aesthetic of Lucas Cranach the Elder and Cornelis Engebrechtz, Currin brings dynamic, historicized figures into contact with a distinctly modern view of sexuality and the human body. Mantis, like many of these new works, engages with Northern European Mannerism, a movement known for its juxtaposition of dramatic, stylized poses with architectonic solidity. 1433–35) by depicting a knee and a foot that project beyond the frame. The work takes further cues from van Eyck’s Annunciation Diptych (ca. In Mantis (2020), one woman perches atop another in an awkward pyramidal pose borrowed from an erotic comic book that also suggests the angular form of the titular insect. Sunflower (2021) also isolates its female subject within the contained space of an alcove, with only the large red flower that she holds beginning to escape its painted confines. Her gaunt contours, however, undermine the curvaceous archetype suggested by the painting’s title and rather than being tantalizingly available, she is contained within a boxlike niche. Pinup (2021) depicts a solitary female nude draped in rags and with her arms raised provocatively behind her head. He has spoken of the method as imparting to figures a funerary aspect, suggesting a meditation on death-or the demise of eroticism-and a look back at his own earlier work. Currin uses grisaille, a monochrome technique identified with Jan van Eyck and other artists, to evoke the texture of marble. In these so-called “memorials,” statuary figures are rendered in alabaster tones warm flesh is replaced with cold trompe l’oeil stone in a confrontation between the sordid and the stately that diverts the traditional medium of public art to unexpected ends. In their extreme mannerism, they combine the beautiful and the grotesque, the sacred and the profane.Ī series of startling new paintings begun in 2020 finds Currin bringing his musings on intimacy, eroticism, and feminine and masculine identities into a fresh context that expands his repertoire of art historical references while returning to the explicitly sexual imagery of his earlier work. His figures-predominantly female and often wildly exaggerated-have diverse sources, from pornographic pinups to old master paintings. Sophisticated in technique and perverse in subject matter, Currin’s portraits conflate high and low culture in a teasing blend of satire and homage. This is his first solo exhibition at the gallery in New York since 2010. Gagosian is pleased to present Memorial, an exhibition of new paintings by John Currin.
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