ART CITIES:N.York-Robert Longo
During the last ten years, Robert Longo has created several important photorealistic cycles. The selection of themes is political. They have their origin in a reflection on power and its manifestations. The works are reflections on the respective time. Like Goya and Sergei Eisenstein, whom he admires and repeatedly quotes in his own works, he looks at the horrors of our time. The absence of color underlines the documentary quality of his works.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Metro Pictures Archive
Although Robert Longo studied sculpture, drawing remained Longo’s favorite form of self-expression. However, the sculptural influence pervades his drawing technique, as Longo’s works have a distinctive chiseled line that seems to give the drawings a three-dimensional quality. The eight hyperreal charcoal drawings in the exhibition “Fugitive Images” continue Robert Longo’s “Destroyer Cycle” a series that focuses on the indelible imagery generated by the current politics of power, greed, aggression, and inhumanity. The title “Fugitive Images” refers to the transitory appearance and displacement of impactful media images from across the globe. Longo believes it is morally imperative to secure their permanence. Longo’s drawing “Untitled (Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi; Istanbul, Turkey; October 2, 2018)” (2019) is central to the exhibition, which includes works depicting a range of world events from disparate locations. The journalist is shown disappearing into a field of static that recalls a television with poor reception, struggling to maintain the picture. In stark contrast to the evanescent portrait of the murdered journalist is “Untitled (Refugees Moonbird Sighting, Mediterranean Sea; May 5, 2017)” (2019), a deeply humane drawing of a mass of migrants on a grueling journey from Central America. The work focuses on the faces and personal effects of the individual men, women, and children, who appear desperate and exhausted. Another drawing that shares the main gallery counters this sympathetic sentiment, showing a choreographed military parade of North Korean soldiers in an exaggerated, highly athletic, mechanized goose step commonly associated with dictatorial regimes and blind obedience. The reference images that are the basis of Longo’s drawings are generally extensively altered and merged. “Untitled (Defaced Jewish Cemetery; Strasbourg, France; December 14, 2018)” (2019) of a Jewish cemetery in France crudely vandalized by Neo-Nazis is an exception. Longo maintains the legibility of the tombstones despite the spray-painted swastikas, which fail to obscure the engraved epitaphs of the people buried there––a widow, a religious man who lived a long life, and an honest hardworking man who died on Shabbat. The exhibition ends with a moment of optimism, determination, and progress. Longo’s drawing of Congress during President Trump’s second State of the Union Address immortalizes the female representatives and lawmakers who chose to wear white in solidarity with the suffragette movement by portraying them as a blurred beacon of light within a sea of darkness.
Info: Metro Pictures, 519 West 24th Street, New York, Duration: 14/11-21/12/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.metropictures.com
