In New York, the Hauser & Wirth and Sprüth Magers galleries offered a rare glimpse into George Condo's impulsive, dynamic, and complex approach to the human mind through pastel.
He is among the most highly regarded American painters on the contemporary art market. Some of his canvases have achieved record sales of nearly seven million dollars, such as "Force Field" and "Nude and Forms." This native of Concord, New Hampshire, now based in New York, is known for his figurative style, fractured portraits, and tormented imagery.
The artist who worked with Andy Warhol at the Factory, William S. Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg, and who coined the term "artificial realism," continues to reference the European heritage that has nourished him. For forty years, his hybrid and abundant works have played with multiforms and metamorphosis, with bursts of vibrant color and styles from various movements in art history, referencing Picasso, Velázquez, Manet, Cézanne, Basquiat… His fame reached its peak in the 80s and has continued to grow ever since.
Today, through these two exhibitions, the 68-year-old artist once again pushes the boundaries of improvisation in his work, exploring the interplay between texture and pastel, figuration and abstraction, classicism and modernity. He allows psychological states to express themselves, always probing them on different levels of interpretation, thus materializing "the fragmented and elusive nature of ineffable thoughts and feelings."
Oddities of the mind
The exhibition, split into two parts across the spaces of Sprüth Magers (Upper East Side) and Hauser & Wirth (SoHo), has thus opened up new perspectives on his creative process, giving free rein to his bold and instinctive gestures. His spontaneous canvases disregard preparatory sketches, playing with layers of gesso and fields of color, for a plunge into the multifaceted nature of the human spirit.
Hauser & Wirth presented new puzzle-like portraits. His "bizarre characters," as the artist calls them, highlight internal tensions and transient emotions, intensified by vivid colors. The fragmented faces, assembled using geometric planes, reflect the complex, elusive, and unstructured nature of the mind.
Sprüth Magers, who has represented him since 1984, exhibited frenetic color compositions alongside austere black and white pastels last month. Here, he incorporates drops and splashes of colored pigments, where forms intersect and overlap, moving away from figurative elements. While he abandons all reference to the human face, he places greater emphasis on gesture, line, and rhythm. His paintings "Centrifuge," "Open Forms," "No Direction Home," and "Chaotic Combustion" invite the viewer to meditate on fluidity and tumult.
These two complementary exhibitions offered a chance to (re)discover George Condo's heightened vision of human thought. Even more importantly, they highlighted his mastery of color, his expertise with materials, and his profound connections between abstraction and figuration. An exhilarating preview before the retrospective in October at the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris.
George Condo Pastels (Part 1)
from January 29 to March 1, 2025
Spruth Magers
5900 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles (USA)
George Condo Pastels (Part 2)
from January 29 to April 12, 2025
Hauser & Wirth
134 Wooster Street, New York (United States)
