George Condo’s ‘Pastels’: A Two-Part Exhibition spanning galleries at both Sprüth Magers and Hauser & Wirth in New York City, offers a glimpse into the artist’s creative process and unbound inventiveness through the mediumof pastel.
Condo’s new works challenge the limits of improvisation within this medium—spontaneously deploying gesso, fields of color and dramatic pastel gestures, all without the benefit of preparatory sketches—to expressvarious states of the human psyche. The artist embraces the act of abstraction within a figural framework in novelways, materializing the fragmented, elusive nature of ineffable thoughts and feelings.
Together, these complementary presentations highlight the sui generis power of Condo’s oeuvre. The presentationat Hauser & Wirth comprises a new series of puzzle-like portraits, which the artist has dubbed his ‘bizarre characters,’ their visages simultaneously splintered and affixed by bright geometric planes. The jagged electricitycreated by the faceted compositions of these works signals the complex and often conflicted nature of the mind.
At Sprüth Magers, Condo presents frenzied color compositions alongside a series of new black-and-white pastels that incorporate deliberate drips and spatters of colored pigment. Here, overlapping and intersecting shapesthat might typically suggest figurative elements forego any reference to the human face, emphasizing insteadthe gesture, line and rhythm of their making. With such titles as Centrifuge, Open Forms, No Direction Home,and Chaotic Combustion, these recent paintings evoke fluidity and tumult—Condo’s reflection, perhaps, on hisricocheting innermost feelings and thoughts
Taken together, the works across both locations form a visual essay on the flair and diversity of Condo’s draftsmanship, exceptional sense of color, and mastery of any material
George Condo. Pastels
Hauser & Wirth New York, 134 Wooster Street
29th January – 12th April 2025
Sprüth Magers, 22 E 80th Street 29th January – 1st March 2025
About the Artist
Born in Concord, New Hampshire in 1957, George Condo lives and works in New York City. He studied ArtHistory and Music Theory at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell before relocating to New York, where heworked as a printer for Andy Warhol. In 1985, Condo moved to Paris, subsequently spending a decade movingbetween New York and Europe. During this period, Condo invented his hallmark ‘artificial realism’ and made hisfirst foray into sculpture. His 11ft gold leaf sculpture ‘Constellation of Voices’ (2019) was recently acquired as apermanent gift to The Metropolitan Opera House in Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.Condo’s work has appeared in a number of solo exhibitions including ‘Confrontation’ in 2016 at the StaatlicheMuseen zu Berlin – Museum Berggruen in Berlin, Germany. In this exhibition, work by Condo was presentedalongside some of his major art historical reference points: masterpieces by Cézanne, Picasso, Matisse, Klee andGiacometti. From 2011 – 2012, a mid-career survey of Condo’s portraiture entitled ‘Mental States’ travelled fromthe New Museum, New York to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands, Hayward Gallery,London, United Kingdom, and Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany. Condo’s work can be found in numerousrenowned public collections internationally: Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; Tate Modern, London,United Kingdom; The Broad Collection, Los Angeles CA; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York NY; TheMuseum of Modern Art, New York NY; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York NY; and the WhitneyMuseum of American Art, New York NY among many others. In fall 2025, Condo will be the subject of a majorsolo exhibition at Le Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris.
