New works by Djordje Ozbolt at Hauser & Wirth

Djordje Ozbolt
Releasing the Demons of Creativity
2014
Acrylic on icon board
80 x 70 x 5.5 cm / 31 1/2 x 27 1/2 x 2 1/8 in
Photo: Genevieve Hanson

New works by Djordje Ozbolt at Hauser & Wirth Hauser & Wirth presents ‘More paintings about poets and food’, the gallery’s first New York exhibition devoted to internationally admired Belgrade-born, London-based artist Djordje Ozbolt. 14 January – 21 February 2015.]]>

Source: Hauser & Wirth

Based in London since the mid-1990s, Ozbolt is a voracious traveller and exoticist whose work wistfully ransacks cultures, traditions, curiosities, and epochs. Collapsing the narratives of his paintings and sculptures into solitary images, Ozbolt creates mysterious and often macabre imagery that persistently conflates traditional European genres – of portraiture, still life, landscape, and history painting – with motifs sourced from Christianity, African and Asian art, and cultural stereotypes, all overlaid with the artist’s signature sharp wit.

Central to the exhibition is Ozbolt’s new work ’50 ways to leave your lover’ (2014), a major installation – and the largest work created by the artist to date – of 50 paintings presented in a continuous horizon line on the gallery’s second floor, where viewers are invited to follow a path through the artist’s rambunctious imagination. In the middle of the space is a custom-built trolley designed to hold and transport all 50 paintings. Assembled from found wood and scrap material, this cart functions both as quasi-Modernist sculpture and a portable repository for the artist’s work.

The subjects of paintings in ’50 ways to leave your lover’ (which takes its title from Paul Simon’s 1975 hit song of the same name) derive from pop culture and politics, and the history of art and abstraction. Some are painted in bold, bright colours, while others are rendered in mute monochromatic hues. Offering up images from found and fantasy scenes, the paintings reveal a glimpse into the random effusions of Ozbolt’s subconscious, teetering between, and often spilling into, the theatre of the absurd. This series of 50 works was painted within a three-month period and can be read diaristically as a sketchbook of the artist’s moods and associations at a particular moment in time. Flitting between solid, geometric block painting and scratchy, gestural markmaking, ’50 ways to leave your lover’ playfully illustrates Ozbolt’s droll humour and mastery of paint.

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