'George Condon: Mental States' at the New Museum in New York

Written by Randolph Horstenburger Tuesday, 07 February 2012 22:43

New York, NY - In conjunction with the Hayward Gallery in London, the New Museum in New York presents "George Condo: Mental States" until 15th May 2011. The exhibition is the first conceptual survey of twenty five years of work by the American artist George Condo. Concentrating on painting, but including sculpture as well, the exhibition will offer a comprehensive survey of a career that has been innovative in his assimilation and appropriation of elements of the greatest Western artists of the past five hundred years, from Velasquez to Picasso to Arshile Gorky. Condo’s career has been most prolific as a portraitist, but one who has devised a wholly unique way to interpret this genre. Beginning in the mid 1980s he developed the idea of “artificial realism” an idea that spawned a race of entirely imagined entities. Conventionally, a portrait depicts a individual who exists, or once existed. Condo’s portraits do not. Painted with a highly detailed naturalism that gives old masterish attention to every detail of figure, costume and attribute, Condo’s portraits remain recognizable as types, butlers, businessmen, saints or cleaning ladies, despite their often fantastic, or humorously grotesque features.

Condo’s production is famously prodigious, and this tightly edited collection of works dating from 1982 to the present day, is presented in thematic sections or chapters developed in close collaboration with the artist. A dramatic installation of a collection of more than fifty portraits in myriad styles, sizes, and types is the centerpiece of the exhibition. A catalog to accompany the exhibition features essays by Ralph Rugoff, Director of the Hayward Gallery, Laura Hoptman, former Kraus Family Senior Curator at the New Museum as well as the fiction writers Will Self and David Means. After its presentation at the New Museum, the exhibition will travel to Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (June 4 – September 25, 2011); Hayward Gallery, London (October 18, 2011 – January 15, 2012); and Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (February 23 – May 28, 2012).





American artist George Condo was born in New Hampshire in 1957. He has occupied a prominent position in the art world for close to three decades. Often called “an artist’s artist,” Condo has stood as an example to younger practitioners through his unabashed commitment to his personal vision despite the coming and goings of fads in the art world. Along with Schnabel, Basquiat, and Haring, Condo was instrumental in the international revival of painting in the 1980s. Condo studied art history and music theory at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell. The first public exhibitions of his work took place in New York City at various East Village galleries in 1981. His first solo exhibition was in Los Angeles in 1983 at the Ulrike Kantor Gallery, followed in 1984 by a simultaneous two-gallery exhibition in New York at Pat Hearn and Barbara Gladstone galleries.The New Museum previously showed Condo’s work as part of the exhibition “East Village USA” (December 9, 2004–March 19, 2005).

Condo has exhibited extensively in both the United States and in Europe. His work has been included in museum shows at the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Monterrey, Mexico; Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain, Nice, France; and Stalliche Kunthstalle Baden, Germany, among others. His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the Albright-Knox Museum, Buffalo, New York. In 1999, Condo received an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2005 he received the Francis J. Greenberger Award.

The New Museum, founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker, is the only museum in New York City exclusively devoted to presenting contemporary art from around the world. In the past, the New Museum has exhibited artists from Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cameroon, China, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Germany, Poland, Spain, South Africa, Turkey, and the United Kingdom among many other countries. The Museum presents the work of under-recognized artists, and has mounted ambitious surveys of important figures such as Ana Mendieta, William Kentridge, David Wojnarowicz, Paul McCarthy and Andrea Zittel before they received widespread public recognition. In 2003 the New Museum presented the highly-regarded exhibition 'Black President: The Art and Legacy of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti'. Also in 2003, the New Museum formed an affiliation with Rhizome, a leading online platform for global new media art. In December 2007, the New Museum opened the doors at its new location on 235 Bowery, at Prince Street. This new facility, designed by the Pritzker Prize winning  Tokyo-based firm of Sejima + Nishizawa/SANAA and the New York-based firm Gensler, has greatly expanded the Museum’s exhibitions and space. In March 2008, the museum's new building was named one of the architectural seven wonders by Conde Nast Traveler. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.newmuseum.org

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