Condo imbues the characters in his portraits with a psychological complexity exposing both their outer appearance and their inner condition. His figures are archetypes from real life as he remembers or imagines them to be. A vast array of invented characters surrounds the main figure Jean Louis, whose multiple personalities include a driver, a butler, several maids, a chef, and a whole host of relatives. We meet other characters such as Batman and the Playboy Bunny, Uncle Joe, or the Truck Driver, they are “fractions of humanity battling extinction,” as Condo himself puts it in his conversation with Ralph Rugoff.

George Condo: Existential Portraits represents paintings, drawings, and sculpture from the beginning of 2005 through May 2006. When we turn the pages, the characters keep changing, their variations speaking of Condo’s conceptual approach towards high and low art, but right behind the insistent continuity of images we might suspect a certain amount of madness.

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In collaboration with Luhring Augustine, New York