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Figures in a Landscape

April 1–May 14, 2011
Hong Kong

Installation view Photo: Martin Wong

Installation view

Photo: Martin Wong

Installation view Photo: Martin Wong

Installation view

Photo: Martin Wong

Installation view Photo: Martin Wong

Installation view

Photo: Martin Wong

Installation view Photo: Martin Wong

Installation view

Photo: Martin Wong

Installation view Photo: Martin Wong

Installation view

Photo: Martin Wong

Installation view Photo: Martin Wong

Installation view

Photo: Martin Wong

Installation view Photo: Martin Wong

Installation view

Photo: Martin Wong

Works Exhibited

Richard Phillips, Libertas, 2010 Oil on linen, 102 × 79 ¼ inches (259.1 × 201.3 cm)© Richard Phillips

Richard Phillips, Libertas, 2010

Oil on linen, 102 × 79 ¼ inches (259.1 × 201.3 cm)
© Richard Phillips

Cecily Brown, Figures in a Landscape 1, 2001 Oil on linen, 90 × 100 inches (228.6 × 254 cm)© Cecily Brown

Cecily Brown, Figures in a Landscape 1, 2001

Oil on linen, 90 × 100 inches (228.6 × 254 cm)
© Cecily Brown

Jeff Koons, Waterfall (Dots) Tree Rocks, 2008 Oil on canvas, 108 × 84 inches (274.3 × 213.4 cm)© Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons, Waterfall (Dots) Tree Rocks, 2008

Oil on canvas, 108 × 84 inches (274.3 × 213.4 cm)
© Jeff Koons

About

Gagosian Hong Kong is pleased to present Figures in a Landscape, an exhibition of paintings and photographs by gallery artists including Cecily Brown, Glenn Brown, Roe Ethridge, Jeff Koons, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Phillips, and Richard Prince.

Inspired by Roy Lichtenstein’s 1985 painting, Figures in a Landscape explores the classical artistic theme that remains of persistent interest to contemporary artists the world over. Here, three generations of artists, in works spanning more than twenty-five years, elaborate on the theme in paint on canvas, photography, or a synthesis of the two, producing images that are highly diverse in approach, content, and effect.

The late Pop icon Roy Lichtenstein is represented by a modern homage to the landscape idylls of French Classicism, with its abstracted scene of nymphs dancing in a forest. In contrast to the sketchy yet meticulously rendered flatness of Lichtenstein’s composition, Cecily Brown’s Figures in a Landscape I (2001) is a sensuous mélange of fleshy oil paint that recalls the loose brushwork and jumbled forms of Abstract Expressionism. Jeff Koons’s Waterfall Dots (Tree Rocks) (2008), with its oscillating visual field and anatomical overdrawing, revisits Marcel Duchamp’s famous Étant donnés, where a primordial landscape provides the backdrop for a mysterious naked female body.

In the 1980s, Richard Prince began “rephotographing” commercial photography, underscoring the pervasive influence of art history in the construction of advertising and popular visual media. Untitled (Cowboys) (1999), a sweeping mountain landscape with a rainbow cropped from an iconic Marlboro advertisement from the 1980s, is deeply indebted to the American Romantic landscape painting tradition as typified by the Hudson River School, while Roe Ethridge’s somber first-degree photographs provide a rather less heroic and more melancholy view of the contemporary American vernacular. Directly opposed to Ethridge’s low-key, gritty realism are the surreal and highly artificial compositions by Glenn Brown and Richard Phillips, in which figures emerge from backgrounds as if from a black-box theatrical set or a lurid landscape backdrop.

Dorothy Lichtenstein and Irving Blum stand next to each other in front of Roy Lichtenstein's studio in Southampton, New York

In Conversation
Irving Blum and Dorothy Lichtenstein

In celebration of the centenary of Roy Lichtenstein’s birth, Irving Blum and Dorothy Lichtenstein sat down to discuss the artist’s life and legacy, and the exhibition Lichtenstein Remembered curated by Blum at Gagosian, New York.

Alison McDonald, Daniel Belasco, and Scott Rothkopf next to each other in front of a live audience

In Conversation
Daniel Belasco and Scott Rothkopf on Roy Lichtenstein

Gagosian and the Art Students League of New York hosted a conversation on Roy Lichtenstein with Daniel Belasco, executive director of the Al Held Foundation, and Scott Rothkopf, senior deputy director and chief curator of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Organized in celebration of the centenary of the artist’s birth and moderated by Alison McDonald, chief creative officer at Gagosian, the discussion highlights multiple perspectives on Lichtenstein’s decades-long career, during which he helped originate the Pop art movement. The talk coincides with Lichtenstein Remembered, curated by Irving Blum and on view at Gagosian, New York, through October 21.

Steve Martin playing a banjo

Roy and Irving

Actor and art collector Steve Martin reflects on the friendship and professional partnership between Roy Lichtenstein and art dealer Irving Blum.

Roe Ethridge's Two Kittens with Yarn Ball (2017–22) on the cover of Gagosian Quarterly, Spring 2023

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Spring 2023

The Spring 2023 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Roe Ethridge’s Two Kittens with Yarn Ball (2017–22) on its cover.

Glenn Brown: From the Inside Out

Glenn Brown: From the Inside Out

Novelist Andrew Winer reports on the formal, conceptual, historical, and philosophical perspectives embedded in Glenn Brown’s latest paintings and drawings. The two talked after the opening of the artist’s recent New York exhibition Glenn Brown: We’ll Keep On Dancing Till We Pay the Rent.

Glenn Brown in his studio

Glenn Brown: We’ll Keep On Dancing Till We Pay the Rent

In conjunction with his exhibition Glenn Brown: We’ll Keep On Dancing Till We Pay the Rent at Gagosian in New York, the artist sits down to discuss his new paintings, sculptures, and drawings.