The Long Museum in Shanghai is pleased to present the first museum survey in Asia of work by celebrated Los Angeles-based painter Lari Pittman. Curated by Rochelle Steiner, Magic Realism features more than 30 paintings and drawings created over the past 12 years. The exhibition underscores the artist’s ongoing exploration in themes related to modern life, including regeneration and optimistic renewal in 21st century society. On this occasion, works from six key series will be brought together for the first time: “thought-form of the inverse and converse of hope” (2012); Nocturnes (2015); Iris Shots Opening and Closing (2020); Diorama and Vanitas (2021); Cities with Egg Monuments: Luminous (2022); and Sparkling City With Egg Monuments (2023). Opening on August 17, the exhibition sheds light on Pittman’s prolific output and the evolution of his work over the last decade. The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated publication with new texts about the artist and his work, in English and Mandarin.
“I am honored that my work is being shown at The Long Museum in Shanghai,” said Pittman. “The Long Museum has championed my work over the years and I am grateful for their support in mounting such an ambitious exhibition in Asia. This exhibition is special for me because it will showcase many works which haven’t been exhibited before alongside important paintings, including six paintings from the Long Museum collection. I am excited to see my work within the context of the type of contemporary cityscape that has inspired me throughout my career.”
Throughout his illustrious four-decade career, Pittman has developed a distinct visual language that has established him as one of the most significant painters of our generation. Pittman’s signature, densely-layered painting style includes a lexicon of signs and symbols, a compilation of varied painting techniques, unique color combinations, and a clear homage to the handmade, craft, and the decorative. Pittman has had numerous solo and group exhibitions around the world including a major retrospective at the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles in 2019 that was accompanied by an expansive publication. His work has also been included in the Whitney Biennial (1993, 1995, 1997), Documenta (1997), and the Venice Biennale (2003), among other acclaimed shows.
In Magic Realism, the visual motif of eggs, which has appeared in Pittman's work since the mid-1980s, is seen consistently. The forms are integrated into nightscapes and cityscapes; they appear as monuments and as part of nature scenes, ready to hatch into life. Eggs are part of the artist's utopian perspective: a feminist and generative vision of the world rooted in the exuberance of life. Filled with eggs in a variety of sizes and guises, these paintings serve as love letters to the possibilities of life in the twenty-first century, including optimism and renewal.
“Lari Pittman’s work reflects the exuberance of eras past and homes for future worlds,” said Steiner, curator of the exhibition. “His complex imagery brings ordered structures to contemporary ideas, which are presented through unique colors and forms. Lari’s work has left an indelible mark on the history of art, inspiring so many of his peers as well as a younger generation of artists, and it has been a true pleasure to work with him on his first museum survey in Asia.”
Highlights from the exhibition include selections from Pittman’s recent bodies of work Cities with Egg Monuments: Luminous and Sparkling Cities with Egg Monuments, which were presented at Lehmann Maupin in Seoul (2022) and in New York (2023), respectively. Created during the global pandemic between 2020-2022, these bodies of work include a number of monumentally scaled paintings that are characterized by the artist's unique visual aesthetic containing dense, interwoven imagery in vibrant colors. His paintings have consistently explored topics including life, death, love, sex, consumerism, and capitalism. Here, Pittman approaches such themes through the lens of isolation and rebirth, looking both backward and forward in time. The history of decoration is another key element in Pittman’s work, deployed not only for visual patterning but as subject matter itself. Here, it appears as complex ornamentation and a consideration of aesthetics.
The works on view also demonstrate the conceptual strategies and rigor that underpin Pittman’s process. In each work, he begins with the title and then maps visual structure, which he refers to as the work's architecture; from there, he populates his canvases with imagery related to his thematic concerns. Recently, Pittman has presented meditations on modern life, ranging from isolation to abundance. His otherworldly settings are suggestive of the urbanity of cityscapes and the idiosyncrasies of nature. Teeming with life and visual excess, the canvases on view in Magic Realism invite viewers to fantasize about the exuberance and hope for the future.
About the Artist
The son of an American father and Colombian mother, Lari Pittman was born in Los Angeles, and raised in Colombia. He returned to Southern California in 1963 and attended California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Valencia, California as both an undergraduate and a graduate student in the 1970s (B.F.A., 1974 and M.F.A., 1976). He was simultaneously influenced by the approaches of art historian Arlene Raven and artist Miriam Schapiro, who led CalArt's Feminist Art Program and acted as mentors to Pittman. Until Pittman recently retired, for decades he also served as Distinguished Professor in the celebrated art department at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and has also been a devoted mentor to younger generations of artists and curators in Southern California and beyond. A cornerstone of the Los Angeles art world since the 1980s, he also regularly spends time in Mexico City, where he finds inspiration in the traditions, aesthetics, and customs of Mexico.
At a time when many artists of his generation have set up studios filled with assistants, digital tools, and other means for production, Pittman approaches his work based on what he can accomplish working solo through maximum practicality and efficiency. He works independently and is fiercely dedicated to the simplicity of the painting tradition, despite the complexity of his imagery. He does not create preliminary sketches or use photoshop; each composition is achieved with the immediacy of lines drawn on canvas, followed by the application of color. In this sense, Pittman acts as both draftsman and painter at once, demonstrating an ability to move seamlessly from idea to narrative to execution at the highest caliber. His paintings merge these multifaceted influences, resulting in a unique visual language that balances the threads of conceptualism, pattern, decoration, and kitsch.
Pittman’s work is included in numerous public and private collections, including Amore Pacific Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea; The Broad, Los Angeles, CA; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino, Italy; Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), San Francisco, CA; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; and Zabludowicz Collection, London, United Kingdom, among many others.
About the Curator
Rochelle Steiner is a Los Angeles-based curator, writer, and educator, and serves as curatorial fellow for Laguna Art Museum. Previously, she was chief curator and director of public programs and education at Palm Springs Art Museum; associate director and chief curator at Vancouver Art Gallery; director of the Public Art Fund, New York; chief curator at the Serpentine Gallery, London; and associate curator of contemporary art, Saint Louis Art Museum. She also previously served as Professor of Critical Studies and Dean at the USC Roski School of Art at University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
Steiner has curated monographic exhibitions of the works of Glenn Brown, John Currin, Jay DeFeo, Catherine Opie, Gabriel Orozco, Elizabeth Peyton, Cindy Sherman, Gary Simmons, Monika Sosnowska, Rirkrit Tiravanija, as well as forthcoming exhibitions on Carole Caroompas and Fred Tomaselli. Her recent publications include Jay DeFeo: Trees (Laguna Art Museum, 2024), Sarah Charlesworth (DelMonico Books·Prestel, 2017), and Do Ho Suh: Drawings (DelMonico Books·Prestel, 2014).