23 November - 23 December 2001
His previous show in June 2000 was based on an advertisement for a Brice Marden exhibition at Matthew Marks Gallery in NY which appeared in Artforum. The two works in that exhibition playfully exploited the gap between the literalness of the advertisement and the literalness of the painting. The conjunction of the two levels of meaning created a rich experience which was both paradoxical in its conceptual implications and gorgeous in its surfaces.
For his new exhibition Linke continues these themes by replacing Artforum as a source with images of the Loony Tunes cartoon characters. Using these images he makes paintings whose surfaces are physically rich and exaggerated, juxtaposed with those that are matt flat and pixeled. The heaving surfaces of the fantastically thick paint seem almost farcical at times without ever losing the maturity of their meaning. Bulbous and awkward, the work's innocent imagery is offset by a gradually revealed emotional complexity at odds with the childlike state of wonderment usually associated with cartoons.
The superficiality of the familiar imagery allows an unencumbered, real and artificial skin for the complexly suffused surfaces of montaged gel and paint. The focus constantly plays backwards and forwards between the two states of the paintings - a picture and a process. The conceptual dimension of the paintings is more associative and open ended than previous works, allowing a richness of meaning that takes his work to a new level, while holding onto a central core of concerns. These are generous and funny works and a meditation on the themes of pleasure and it's relationship to looking and thinking.
Small Loony Carrot
2001
Acrylic on linen
Installation One in the Other 2001
Running Daffy
2001
Acrylic on linen