Mingus in Mexico (1990). © David Salle, VAGA, NY courtesy of Skarstedt, NY.

Now through June 23, 2018, Skarstedt Gallery presents David Salle: Paintings 1985-1995, a selection of some of the artist’s most significant bodies of work highlighting a particularly prolific and experimental period of Salle’s career. The celebrated master of postmodern composition is known especially for his use of photography and collage in his paintings to deconstruct existing imagery, integrating everything from advertisements to post-war American art into his work, earning his classification among other artists of the ‘70s and ‘80s “Pictures Generation”, whose concerns largely centered on the changing status of the image in the era of mass media. (more…)

David Salle, Yellow Fellow (2015), via Art Observed

Painter David Salle is currently presenting a new body of work at Skarstedt’s Chelsea outpost, returning to his previous Product Paintings series in a set of vividly rendered prints and paintings that seem to address not only the artwork as object and commodity, but also that relation to the Post-War canon. (more…)

Skarstedt Gallery will open its new Chelsea space on May 8th, the gallery reports.  Designed by Selldorf Architects, the exhibition space will take over the previous home of Haunch of Venison on 21st Street.  “We have an ongoing commitment to mounting key historical exhibitions,” founder Per Skarstedt said in a statement. “I’m delighted to open this new gallery space in Chelsea with an exhibition of incredible works by these quintessential modern masters. This approach suits the collaborative way we have always worked with artists and their estates.” (more…)

Robert Mapplethorpe, Self Portrait (1983), courtesy Skarstedt Gallery

Playing with constructed images of self and cultural phenomena, Robert Mapplethorpe’s challenging self-portraits were an influential and essential part of the 1970’s New York arts scene.  Now, the artist’s work in the medium is documented through eleven photographs at Skarstedt Gallery currently on view through June 15th. The photographs are extremely personal explorations that the artist took of himself periodically throughout his life, meant to explore different aspects of his own identity, as he captures himself in a variety of states and moods.

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George Condo, Purple Compression (2011). All images via Skarstedt Gallery.

George Condo is currently showing eleven new works from his ongoing series Drawing Paintings at the Skarstedt Gallery in New York. Combining techniques of spontaneous drawing and more calculated painting, the series blends charcoal lines with pastel acrylics in Condo’s signature figurations. The large colorful canvases are busy with eyes and teeth, bowties and breasts, with the series-within-a-series, Compressions, leaving small stretches of blank canvas outside the compressed scenes. Condo says of the series, “They are about freedom of line and color and blur the distinction between drawing and painting. They are about beauty and horror walking hand in hand. They are about improvisation on the human figure and it’s consciousness.”

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