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| Kerry James Marshall, Untitled (Rapunzel), 2014, Acrylic on PVC panel, 24 x 30 inches. Image via davidzwirner.com |
Published | October 13, 2014
Just
how good is Kerry James Marshall’s show at David Zwirner in
London’s Mayfair district? So good that the second I left today I
began plotting the next time that I could sneak out of the Frieze Art
Fair this week to give it another view. Plenty of shows open here in
the coming days, and there are plenty more that I have yet to see,
but so far Marshall’s seems like the most exciting one in town.
People are talking about it.
Titled
“Look
See,”
this
is his first solo appearance in London since 2005, and his first show
with Zwirner. He has delivered a knockout. Fifty-nine on Friday, he
has hung 14 new paintings, most of solitary people, who are posing
for a screen, or for themselves, or even for you. The mood is
intimate, erotic, and occasionally voyeuristic. They may make you
uncomfortable—like you are peering in on a private moment—but you
will not want to look away.
These
are formidable, alluring objects, painted on thick PVC panels. Their
surfaces are flat, but the brushstrokes, patterning, and color they
contain are luscious. The subject of Untitled
(Sofa Girl) (all
works 2014), for instance, reclines alone on Daniel Buren-striped
fabric, cloaked in a deep-blue-purple-black darkness, remote in hand,
watching a television set that is just out of view, but which casts a
slight glow over room. She has short hair, a facial expression that
is a rare mixture of exhausted, amazed, and dazed—the face of
insomnia-induced TV binges (a rare sight in art, but one you have
felt)—and an adorable, very sleepy cat. It is an incredible
painting, complex but immediate.
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