Art & Photography / Who, What, Why
George Condo's Mental States — December 5, 2011 —
G e or ge Co nd o, t h e N ew York-ba sed American p ain te r w h o h a s b e e n c rea t in g ima ge s of a pr ed omi n a n tl y sel f -i nven ted ca s t o f o ut l a n d i s h, t ra gi-comic ch a ra c te r s s i n ce t h e e a rl y 1 980s . . . Tweet
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Batman and Bunny, 2005 © George Condo
Text Allie Biswas Who? George Condo, the New York-based American painter who has been creating images of a predominantly self-invented cast of outlandish, tragicomic characters since the early 1980s. Having started at the Factory in 1981, working as a screen printer and diamond duster, Condo spent some time exhibiting in the States, before moving to Paris for a decade. It was in Zurich that the artist had his first seminal show in 1985, showing 300 works at Galerie Bruno Bischofberger. After permanently moving back to New York in the mid90s, Condo received an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and, more recently, has designed costumes for the ballet, created masks for fashion designer Adam Kimmel, and designed a record cover for Kanye West. What? Frequently defined as ludicrous in appearance and mentally unsound – what the artist has called 'antipodal beings' – Condo's depiction of figures has allowed for an exploration of his subjects' inner emotions and states of mind through a portraiture that regularly unifies classic cartoonish forms within Cubist and Ab Ex arrangements, handled through painting techniques borrowed from the Old Masters. Nearly 80 works are currently on display in Mental States at the Hayward Gallery – an exhibition of Condo's work from