Mernet Larsen by James Cohan
1 in stock
Description
For over six decades, American painter Mernet Larsen has depicted hard-edged, enigmatic characters that inhabit an uncanny parallel world, filled with tension and wry humor.
Larsen's works employ various spatial systems that often contradict: combining reverse, isometric, and conventional perspectives, she casts everyday scenarios into a vertigo-inducing version of reality, strangely akin to our own. Drawing from influences that range from Russian Constructivism to Bunraku puppet theater and Indian miniatures, her works take compositional cues from art of the past as springboards for uniquely spatial figure-paintings that speak to the anxieties of the present.
Curator Veronica Roberts says of Larsen's work, "the subjects and scenarios she depicts are typically banal: friends gathered in conversation, a couple reading in bed, and faculty meetings. Through unexpected compositional moves, however, she transforms these prosaic moments into psychological dramas that hint at the dislocations, disruptions, and dread that fill our lives."
This extensive, richly illustrated monograph features works of art from all stages of Mernet Larsen's career, as well as an interview with the artist by Hans Ulrich Obrist, and essays by the curators Susan Thompson and Veronica Roberts.
Hardcover
24 x 30 x 1.5 cm
Published July 2021 by Kerber Verlag
