Fascinated for decades by Post-Impressionist artist Paul Cezanne, painter Mernet Larsen applies her own delightfully eccentric perspectival distortions to her French forebear’s iconic imagery in new work at James Cohan Gallery. Larsen diversifies the cast of characters in ‘The Bathers (after Cezanne)’ adding bikinis to figures more robotic than robust and emphasizing artificiality in the human figures that replace Cezanne’s stabilizing triangle of trees in the original. A diving figure heading into flat waves akin to the slats in Japanese Bunraku puppet theater (which allow figures to move through water) and a woman to the left literally holding up the top of the painting add dynamism and complexity. By alluding to Cezanne but shifting away from his focus and results, Larsen emphasizes the choices behind a painting’s design and nods to the many iconic painters who have moved beyond inspiration to find their own unique results. (On view in Tribeca through March 16th).
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Mernet Larsen at James Cohan Gallery
Mernet Larsen continues to break with traditional Western linear perspective in new, irresistibly cheeky canvases at James Cohan Gallery that pay homage to Russian constructivist El Lissitzky. Larsen explains that decades ago, she broke a taboo by imagining that the early 20th century avant-gardist’s abstractions could be read figuratively. She takes things a step further here, turning El Lissitzky’s circles bisected by long rectangles into an astronaut floating in front of a planet or a restaurant table attending by a plank-like waiter bearing cocktails. (On view in Tribeca through Jan 23rd . Masks and social distancing are required).
Mernet Larsen at James Cohan Gallery
Perspective is unmoored in Mernet Larsen’s discombobulating scene of a high-level government meeting. The sense of disorientation suits an array of stiff, featureless leaders who with their flat physiques look as if they might go in whichever direction the wind blows. (On view at James Cohan Gallery’s Chelsea location through June 16th).
Mernet Larsen in ‘Dream Machines’ at James Cohan Gallery
Part of ‘Dream Machines,’ an exhibition that ponders how in daily life, ‘the real and imaginary cease to be contradictory,’ Mernet Larsen’s surreal ‘Sunday Drive’ is both plausible and impossible at once. Her orange-toned factory fresh figures are perfect but creepy, giving viewers pause to reconsider the serendipity of an American tradition. (At James Cohan Gallery’s Chelsea location through July 28th).
Mernet Larsen in ‘Let’s Get Figurative’ at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery
Mernet Larsen, Nativity, acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 74 x 31.5 inches, 2005.