Review #4: A visit to Gladstone Gallery

According to the gallery description, Lari Pittman’s art is explained as the following: “these still life painting usually incorporate skulls, burning candles, cut flowers and other objects that mark the passage of time and the transience of life”. His artworks creates a sense of confusion in viewers mind because there is just so much happening in one scene and so many elements are drawn together into the image at once. The way he combines different characters and objects together and the colors he uses grabs my attention the moment I have my eyes on them. Pittman has a very intriguing way of combing different pieces of elements together in all of his images. He likes to blend elements that don’t usually go well together, yet somehow he always manage to work it all out and the resulting image most of the time ends up being very unique and interesting to look at.
The first thing I notice as I go around the gallery is that most of the colors Pitman chooses for each of his images are colors from a similar range. But there are always one or two colors that just stand out too much and don’t ordinarily look good when combined together. For instance, one of his images has a blue theme where he uses different shades of blue together, dark and light, but then he uses a really bright orange and red on top of those blue, and that is just not the combination that is visually appealing to me. In his case, he was able to get around it and make the image look good with all other characters and objects on top of that blue and bright orange/red combination. As for the background, he tends to use colors that are much darker than the foreground so it shows support to the images or characters in the front. The way he draws the shadows helps in differentiating between layers of objects and images. It successfully makes certain things stand out more than others and it also adds more depth to the composition. Moreover, Pittman uses many shades of shadows to present different perspectives and direction to his images. Another point about his color choice is that he works very well in contrasting between light and darkness and uses intense and saturated colors in all of his images.
Pittman seems to be transforming a lot of his images from something very simple to something that looks very complicated. Every element just seems to build up on top of each other without any conflicts. In many of his images, he likes to use a character that is not realistic and sometimes robotic. There are almost no ordinary figures or faces. For example, he uses bugs, butterflies, and leafs as body with human faces. All the expression on the face is distorted somehow so it looks kind of funny. He also likes to create figures with things from the nature, such as out of bamboos, onions, or different kinds of food. Another element that I find interesting about Pittman’s images is that most of them, if not all, show that something’s being captured or tortured. There are split parts of a body in one image that are chained to wires and hooks. Another image shows a figure being hanged from the top of the picture and is about to be cooked on two sunny side up eggs that are sitting in the frying pan. There’s also this one where a rabbit is stuck into a light bulb with eggshell and shapes decorating the boarders. All these elements are not usually put together like the way Pittman combines them in his artworks. His unique use of animals with human body and nature seems interesting yet a little spooky to me.
Although I am not a fan of things related to horror themes, I still like the way Pittman composed his pictures. I remember taking some steps away from the images, and then I discover that things look totally different. The focus shifts from details to the “big” picture. I begin to see images overlaying on more images. The shapes of animals become clearer while things that I haven’t notice before rises to the surface. The detail of the image doesn’t seem to matter anymore. The overall impression on the picture takes control over my mind. I have to constantly return to different images from before because I always find something new the second or even third time. Every picture’s different yet I can still feel the connection in between all the images he created.