ART CITIES:Beverly Hills-John Currin

The first solo exhibition of John Currin in more than a decade at Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills, presents paintings that are at once highly seductive and deeply perplexing. His masterful technique is achieved through the study and emulation of the compositional devices, graphic rhythms, and refined surfaces of sixteenth and seventeenth century Northern European painting.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Gagosian Gallery Archive

His eroticized subjects exist at odds with the popular dialogue and politics of contemporary art. With inspirations as diverse as Old Master portraits, pin-ups, pornography, and B-movies, Currin paints ideational yet challengingly perverse images of women, from lusty nymphs and dour matrons to more ethereal feminine prototypes. Consistent throughout his oeuvre is his search for the point at which the beautiful and the grotesque hold each other in perfect balance. In his most recent work, Currin layers each canvas with multiple sex scenes, creating paintings within paintings. To existing works-in-progress, he introduces new figures, interrupting the picture plane with contrasting color, texture, and technical methods. In tondos that allude to Renaissance precedents, nudes fluctuate between vivid focus and hazy distortion. Currin continues to explore the libertine fantasies of the id through the prism of art history.

Info: John Currin, Gagosian Gallery, 456 North Camden Drive Beverly Hills, Duration:19/2-11/4/15 Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.gagosian.com