Llyn Foulkes at the New Museum, New York
Exhibition Review by Luigi Galimberti Faussone
This extensive career retrospective features over one hundred works covering, in chronological order, the extraordinary development of Llyn Foulkes’ artistic production. From the early cartoons that he sketched on paper in his teens, to the latest three-dimensional compositions, the exhibition also includes his abstract expressionist drawings, photo collages and pop art oil paintings.
Although the over-crowded walls and narrow rooms may easily confuse the viewer with an excess of visual stimuli, the exhibition has the undeniable merit of finally making the work of the Los Angeles artist known to a wider public. Despite a few recent highlights—notably his appearance in the 2011 Venice Biennale and in Kassel’s Documenta 13 last year—Foulkes’ work has remained somewhat in the shadow. His creations are powerful and mature, being attractive and repulsive at the same time, strong and subtle, playful and eerie.
The visual and substantial richness of his production is evident in the so-called “bloody head” series. Born by reworking a self-portrait after a visit to a mortuary, where a friend who was working there showed him a corpse with the flap of his scalp hanging over his forehead, this series of disfigured portraits shows Foulkes’ technical ability in merging together painting, collage and sculptural elements. Behind their gory surface, Foulkes often imbues these works with political and social messages, such as in Ronald Reagan’s portrait Golden Ruler (1985), in which a wooden ruler covers Reagan’s bleeding eyes, or in Double Trouble (1991), which depicts a man with a fetus in his open mouth and a gun in his hand, hinting at the issues of abortion and gun control.
Foulkes’ greatest achievements are his narrative tableaux paintings, which are large three-dimensional, diorama-like compositions. In particular, The Awakening (1994–2012) (image right) took almost two decades to finish. It depicts the artist and his wife towards the end of their marriage. Foulkes employed the collage technique to make his work as intimate and painful as it could ever get: metal screws take the place of the couple’s eyes, the photo of their dog stands on the console table, the actual ruby towel where the dog used to sleep serves as the bed’s blanket. As elsewhere in the artistic production of Llyn Foulkes, the three-dimensionality of the composition is a product of time and its effects rather than a mere spatial device.
The exhibition is organized by the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and is curated by Ali Subotnick. It was first on view at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, 3 February-19 May 2013; then at the New Museum, New York, 12 June-1 September 2013; finally it travels to the Museum Kurhaus Kleve, Kleve, Germany, 6 December 2013–2 March 2014. A fully illustrated catalogue including essays by Jim Lewis, Jason Weiss and Ali Subotnick accompanies the exhibition.
This review appeared in Issue 6 of Kolaj Magazine. To get your own copy or to subscribe, visit http://kolajmagazine.com/content/subscribe.
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Image (top):
Installation View
of “Llyn Foulkes”, 12 June-1 September 2013
Image courtesy of New Museum, New York
Photo: Benoit Pailley
Image (centre):
The Awakening
by Llyn Foulkes
40.25″x44″x7″
mixed mediums
1994-2012
private collection
Image courtesy of New Museum, New York
Photo: Robert Wedemeyer