George Condo: Pastels
Hauser & Wirth, NY (134 Wooster Street)
January 29 –12 April 2025
George Condo calls these portraits his “bizarre characters.” They were done without preparatory sketches and they are filled with eyes at every angle, teeth at every angle and bold splashes of color, almost at odds with the softness that one generally associates with pastels. There are no pale yellows or pale pinks. Instead, there are bold reds and blues, and often checkerboards of orange and yellow. In one work, the neck is pink and visible; in another it has no shape and is a mixture of colors, at strange angles. Some ears are grey and some are blue and red.
These are brilliantly rearranged faces, abstractions with planes of color intersecting each other, with color blocks shaping their heads; with noses and teeth in unexpected places, often crashing into other. They are powerful portraits with names often associated with their predominant color: The Redhead, The Smiling Blonde, Girl with Green Hair, and Brown Expanded Head.
Condo’s distorted portraiture has been seen round the world. In 2016, there was a solo exhibition of his work at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin — Museum Berggruen in Berlin, Germany. From 2011–2012, there was a mid-career survey of Condo’s work entitled “Mental States” that traveled from the New Museum, New York to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, in Rotterdam, Netherlands, to the Hayward Gallery in London, UK, and to Schim Kunstle, in Frankfurt Germany.
Now his portraits are on exhibit in the Hauser & Wirth Gallery in SoHo. Fractured faces, suggesting fractured minds, minds filled with complex and complicated thoughts. The portraits fill the spaces, leaving little room for background. Most are heads without bodies. And, always, their eyes stare at you.
