george condo's 'people are strange' opens at hauser & wirth LA

hauser & wirth opens in west hollywood

This week Hauser & Wirth celebrated the opening of its gallery in West Hollywood — its second Los Angeles space — with an inaugural exhibition by artist George Condo dubbed ‘People Are Strange.’ Of course, the show’s title instantly recalls the 1967 song by the Doors — a band which itself played a role in shaping the California city’s history and culture. This exhibition opened on February 15th, 2023 — just in time for the Frieze LA art fair — and marks the artist’s first show in the city in five years.

Hanging amongst the massive gallery space are large-scale canvases filled with abstracted and fragmented portraits. The works show layers of ‘vibrating planes, lines and geometries that suggest a world of oppositional forces and states, at once solemn and euphoric, connected and entropic, logical and ineffable, beautiful and ugly.’ The series had been painted during the past eighteen months in New York City, where the artist lives and works.

Hauser & Wirth’s new West Hollywood gallery | image © designboom

layered and abstracted portraits suggest a ‘time-lapse’

Upon the opening of ‘People Are Strange’ at Hauser & Wirth’s West Hollywood gallery, artist George Condo explains that the show’s title references ‘the effect of the divisive politics of our time that have created a fractured society.’ He continues: ‘In these works I put together the broken pieces and fragmented aspects of that division to intentionally point out the question: is it that people are strange or is it the politicians that are in fact strange, thus resulting in a maelstrom of dehumanized and disenchanted people who as a result have become strange….even to themselves.’

With ‘People Are Strange,’ the artist renders abstracted impressions of the ‘strange world around him.’ Through this process, he identifies that the transformative effects of time’s passage unites us — especially the ‘time-lapse’ many have experienced through the pandemic.

Transitional Portrait in Turquoise and Gold, George Condo, 2022 | image © designboom

the passage of time through the eyes of george condo

Condo’s latest forays into size and painting techniques are on display in Hauser & Wirth’s new West Hollywood gallery, which resides in a 1930s Spanish Colonial Revival building reminiscent of the Golden Age of Hollywood. While at first these new works appear to quite different, they indeed share a common theme of transformation. Through their complex layering and abstracted figures, they capture the concept of time and change.

George Condo believes an artist is able to illustrate the intangible effects of time, recognizing that ‘the transformation of society and people is something we all feel but that a painter can actually show.’ Each artwork combines chaos and order to reflect the current climate of disarray and the perpetual struggles occurring throughout the world.

Transformation, George Condo, 2022 | image © designboom

Interaction, George Condo, 2022 | image © designboom
exhibition view | image © designboom

Transitional Portrait in Blue and White (left), Transitional Portrait in Pink and Green (right), George Condo, 2022
image © George Condo, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth | photo by Keith Lubow