About
There’s the passing moment, and then there’s eternity. Two different kinds of time in one painting.
—John Currin
Gagosian is pleased to present Memorial, an exhibition of new paintings by John Currin. This is his first solo exhibition at the gallery in New York since 2010.
Sophisticated in technique and perverse in subject matter, Currin’s portraits conflate high and low culture in a teasing blend of satire and homage. His figures—predominantly female and often wildly exaggerated—have diverse sources, from pornographic pinups to old master paintings. In their extreme mannerism, they combine the beautiful and the grotesque, the sacred and the profane.
A 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on intimacy, eroticism, and feminine and masculine identities into a fresh context that expands his repertoire of art historical references while returning to the explicitly sexual imagery of his earlier work. 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. Currin uses grisaille, a monochrome technique identified with Jan van Eyck and other artists, to evoke the texture of marble. 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.
#JohnCurrin
John Currin: Monuments to Lust
Natasha Stagg reports on a trip to John Currin’s New York studio.
Art&Newport
Writers and curators Dodie Kazanjian and Alison Gingeras spoke with the Quarterly’s Alison McDonald about the arts organization Art&Newport and the possibilities the historic Rhode Island town offers contemporary artists. Their current exhibition, Games, Gamblers & Cartomancers: The New Cardsharps, on view through October 1, 2023, examines the varied custom of card play and includes artists such as John Currin, Hadi Falapishi, and Katie Stout.
Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Fall 2021
The Fall 2021 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Damien Hirst’s Reclining Woman (2011) on its cover.
Fashion and Art: Proenza Schouler
Derek Blasberg speaks with Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough, the designers behind the New York fashion brand Proenza Schouler, about their influences and collaborations, from Mark Rothko to Harmony Korine.
Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Spring 2020
The Spring 2020 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Cindy Sherman’s Untitled #412 (2003) on its cover.
Mansplaining: Figuring Masculinity in the Age of #MeToo
In light of recent developments around the definition of masculinity in American culture, Alison M. Gingeras, the curator of John Currin: My Life as a Man at Dallas Contemporary, looks closely at the artist’s depictions of male subjects.