FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
REGEN PROJECTS
629 North Almont Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90069
Tel. (310) 276-5424
Fax. (310) 276-7430
JOHN CURRIN: New Paintings
June 22 – July 31, 2002
Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Saturday 11:00 AM-5:00 PM
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 22nd, 6:00-8:00 PM
Regen Projects is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by John Currin. Currin's lush oil paintings focus on the figure, nearly Mannerist in their exaggerated proportions and heightened gestures. There is a decadence in the detail and meticulous brushstroke of Currin’s portraits. Currin's past paintings dealt primarily with the female figure and the idea of desire -- at the same time eluding and embracing the cliché of desire in the form of a woman. Currin's depictions of female subjects range from portraits of teenage girls in yearbook photos, middle-aged woman at once sexual and motherly, seductive seventies starlets, and recently, voluptuous pinup girls whose extraordinary anatomies broach caricature. For this exhibition, Currin has turned his attention to the male figure.
Peter Schjeldahl writes of Currin’s paintings, “No one today makes more telling use of subtle painterly rhetoric than Currin does. The taut and tender concentration of his techniques – he tacitly talks shop with Old Masters from Vincent van Gogh to Lucas Cranach – reacts with the coarse comedy of his images to generate a rare ardor. The longer you look at a Currin, the less you know what to make of it. Finally, you commune directly with the permanent conundrums of painting – ambiguities of light and substance, depth and flatness, the works – on the awkward occasion of the artist’s psychosexual hangups. Currin unties extremes of low-down grotesquerie and classical elegance.” (The Elegant Scavenger. The New Yorker. Feb. 22 – March 1, 1999)
John Currin lives and works in New York. Currin's work has been exhibited throughout Europe and the United States. Upcoming solo exhibitions of Currin’s paintings are being organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and the Serpentine Gallery in London. Currin’s work has been featured in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the ICA in London, and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. A catalogue of Currin’s paintings was published by the FRAC Limousin in conjunction with a solo exhibition in Limoges, France. An upcoming monograph, John Currin, is being published this year by Abrams Books.
A reception for the artist will take place at the gallery on Saturday, June 22nd from 6:00 to 8:00 PM. For further questions please contact Shaun Caley Regen or Lisa Overduin at the gallery at (310) 276-5424.
UPCOMING:
Paul Sietsema
September 7 – October 12, 2002
REGEN PROJECTS
629 North Almont Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90069
Tel. (310) 276-5424
Fax. (310) 276-7430
JOHN CURRIN: New Paintings
June 22 – July 31, 2002
Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Saturday 11:00 AM-5:00 PM
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 22nd, 6:00-8:00 PM
Regen Projects is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by John Currin. Currin's lush oil paintings focus on the figure, nearly Mannerist in their exaggerated proportions and heightened gestures. There is a decadence in the detail and meticulous brushstroke of Currin’s portraits. Currin's past paintings dealt primarily with the female figure and the idea of desire -- at the same time eluding and embracing the cliché of desire in the form of a woman. Currin's depictions of female subjects range from portraits of teenage girls in yearbook photos, middle-aged woman at once sexual and motherly, seductive seventies starlets, and recently, voluptuous pinup girls whose extraordinary anatomies broach caricature. For this exhibition, Currin has turned his attention to the male figure.
Peter Schjeldahl writes of Currin’s paintings, “No one today makes more telling use of subtle painterly rhetoric than Currin does. The taut and tender concentration of his techniques – he tacitly talks shop with Old Masters from Vincent van Gogh to Lucas Cranach – reacts with the coarse comedy of his images to generate a rare ardor. The longer you look at a Currin, the less you know what to make of it. Finally, you commune directly with the permanent conundrums of painting – ambiguities of light and substance, depth and flatness, the works – on the awkward occasion of the artist’s psychosexual hangups. Currin unties extremes of low-down grotesquerie and classical elegance.” (The Elegant Scavenger. The New Yorker. Feb. 22 – March 1, 1999)
John Currin lives and works in New York. Currin's work has been exhibited throughout Europe and the United States. Upcoming solo exhibitions of Currin’s paintings are being organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and the Serpentine Gallery in London. Currin’s work has been featured in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the ICA in London, and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. A catalogue of Currin’s paintings was published by the FRAC Limousin in conjunction with a solo exhibition in Limoges, France. An upcoming monograph, John Currin, is being published this year by Abrams Books.
A reception for the artist will take place at the gallery on Saturday, June 22nd from 6:00 to 8:00 PM. For further questions please contact Shaun Caley Regen or Lisa Overduin at the gallery at (310) 276-5424.
UPCOMING:
Paul Sietsema
September 7 – October 12, 2002