
David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition of new and recent paintings by American artist Lisa Yuskavage, on view at the gallery’s 606 N Western Avenue location in Los Angeles. This will be the artist’s ninth solo exhibition with the gallery, and her first in Los Angeles in almost thirty years.
One of the most original and influential artists of the past three decades, Yuskavage creates works that affirm the singularity of the medium of painting while challenging conventional understandings of genres and viewership. At once exhibitionist and introspective, her rich cast of characters and their varied attributes are layered within compositions built of both representational and abstract elements in which color is the primary vehicle of meaning.
On view will be large and small-format paintings—each set within an imagined artist’s studio—that continue Yuskavage’s exploration of the processes and complexities of art making. Saturated in vibrant, jewellike pigments, the depicted studios become stages where characters from Yuskavage’s oeuvre are intertwined and where time moves backward and forward. With this latest group of works, Yuskavage deepens and expands these recursive and referential elements, mining her personal iconography of figures, artworks, and objects as well as colors, tonalities, and diffuse ambient qualities, which she seamlessly combines into resonant, multifaceted tableaux. Within these timeless spaces, artifacts and objects from the artist’s own art education and career coexist with imagined depictions of art making.
Widely associated with a re-emergence of the figurative in contemporary painting, Lisa Yuskavage has developed her own genre of portraiture in which lavish, erotic, vulgar, angelic women (and more recently men) are cast within fantastical landscapes or dramatically lit interiors. Seamlessly blending pop cultural imagery, color theory, and psychology, Yuskavage draws on classical and modern painterly techniques and, in particular, marshals color as a conduit for complex psychological constructs. As Christopher Bedford describes, Yuskavage’s paintings “are disarmingly present, even naked in their address, laying themselves bare for inspection not because they are exacting and slavish in their depictions, but instead because they hold little if anything back. Yet for all their nakedness, the worlds depicted are just that—worlds—and they are fundamentally distant from our own. The strength of the invitation to look at these paintings and what, in turn, they extend in exchange is exactly as forceful as the world of meaning and implication that is palpable in every brushstroke, yet just slightly out of reach. This collision of clarity of presentation and elusiveness of meaning constitutes [their] central, beguiling axis.”¹

A respected voice in contemporary art discourse.
Focusing on ambitious storytelling and insightful art-world commentary. Ocula Magazine publishes in-depth interviews, critical essays and timely analysis on the artists, exhibitions and ideas driving the global art world.
Learn more about Ocula Magazine
Showcasing the best of the art world.
Ocula partners with galleries from around the world to highlight their artists, artworks and exhibitions. Gallery membership is by application and invitation, with each member vetted by an independent panel.
Learn more about Ocula Membership
Specialises in the sale of major artworks.
Led by a team with deep ties to the world’s leading auction houses, galleries and collectors. Ocula’s advisory team offers bespoke services to high-net-worth clients from around the world who are looking to acquire the best of contemporary and modern art.
Learn more about our team and services