November 17, 2004 – January 9,2005 View Images >
Reception for the artist, November 17, 6-9 pm
Bruno Marina Gallery is delighted to present new work by Jonathan Laib. Entitled Island of Misfit Paintings, the exhibition includes Laib's brightly colored, puffy, flirtatious and mysterious creations formed from poured or painted acrylic sheets. The paintings depict an imaginary world often tinged with nostalgia. They have the glossy surfaces of mass production and vivid colors of pop culture and yet they are clearly handmade and homespun objects. Stuffed like pillows, with edges stretching beyond the confines of the canvas, these works straddle the boundary between painting and sculpture.
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| Jonathan
Laib, Love and Stuff, 2004, acrylic, polyfil an d buttons on canvas |
The title for the show was inspired by the children’s Christmas cartoon The Island of Misfit Toys, about mismatched toys stranded at a lonely outpost. Eventually the toys are accepted despite their quirks, when they are liberated from the island and happily adopted by children. Like those toys Laib’s paintings are misfits, in the best sense of the word. Although rooted in modern painting, Laib’s creations strive to be something else, something delightful and often surprising.
Also
on view are Laib's paper cutout drawings, which continue a tradition pioneered
by Henri Matisse in the late 1940s and kept alive by artists from Ellsworth
Kelly to Kara Walker. Laib's drawings are assembled from finely detailed
forms painstakingly cut and collaged together. Like Walker, Laib is concerned
with pictorial imagery but his cutouts sit apart from the paper in relief.
The effects of light and shadow heighten the drama of the mysterious spaces
depicted in these diorama-like drawings.
Originally from Denver, Colorado, Mr. Laib lives and works in Brooklyn,
New York.
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