Lyn Liu: Dogville
Past exhibition
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Kasmin is pleased to present Dogville, an exhibition of new paintings by Lyn Liu (b. 1993, Beijing). Liu’s work addresses the psychological tension underpinning relationships between individuals through a sequence of uncanny cinematic tableaux. Comprised of paintings realized between 2019–2022, the exhibition draws from the artist’s personal experiences of alienation, utilizing symbolism and an atmosphere of the absurd to provoke reflections on what Liu considers our oppressive social reality. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition.
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Conceiving of her compositions as stills in an overarching though dislocated narrative, the artist takes a filmic approach to considerations of light, staging, and costume. Depicting scenes often situated in the evening or at night, Liu’s tightly rendered dreamscapes feature figures whose identities are concealed, masked, presented alongside a doppelganger, or hidden in shadow. This voyeurist instinct—a longing to see without being seen—acts both as a visual strategy and a window into the artist’s experience as a child, when she traveled between cultures feeling like a perpetual outsider.
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The striking symbols in Liu’s paintings pulsate with a nihilist or existentialist philosophy in the vein of Albert Camus and Franz Kafka, whose work the artist has referenced throughout her oeuvre. In Huggermugger (2022), a rotund, diamond-patterned structure conceals the identity of two bartenders who offer glasses of what might be champagne yet carry the risk of poison. Liu’s interest in the book The Architectural Uncanny by Anthony Vidler further elaborates on the metaphorical potential of buildings and interiors in the work to speak to our modern condition.
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The artist repeatedly returns to animal subjects as counterparts to her human figures, such as in Conference and Cherry Pie (both 2019). Recognizing both wild and domesticated animals as unknowable, unpredictable, and potentially dangerous, Liu’s use of ostriches, frogs, and kangaroos as symbols occasions a fissure between the cycle of mutual observation found in human society. Employed here, they act to highlight the confusion of spectacle and the sense of alienation that can attend a condition of being observed.
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Works
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About the Artist
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Explore
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Les Lalanne: Zoophites
From the Collection of Caroline Hamisky Lalanne
Curated by Paul B. Franklin April 4 – May 9, 2024 509 West 27th Street, New YorkAn exhibition in homage to the acclaimed French sculptors Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne, drawn entirely from the collection of their eldest daughter, Caroline Hamisky Lalanne. Les Lalanne: Zoophites will include major works by these inventive artists who consistently defied art-world conventions. To celebrate the 60th anniversary of Les Lalanne’s first joint solo exhibition, which opened in Paris in June 1964, this exhibition borrows the title Zoophites, an obsolete French term for invertebrate animals that resemble plants in their appearance or growth patterns. The exhibition will be accompanied by a newly commissioned text by curator Paul B. Franklin. -
William N. Copley: LXCN CPLY
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Sara Anstis: Small Works
April 30 – May 30, 2024 514 West 28th Street, New York
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