Twisted Urban and Visionary Landscapes in Contemporary Painting

The publication of Twisted: Urban and visionary landscapes in contemporary paintingcoincides with the exhibition of the same name, and features the work of fifteen young, international painters. These artists are defined by the figurative visual language they use, a language that does not refer to what we might normally think of as physical reality, but instead looks to the reality manifest in video and computer games, television, film, advertising, and other media. Exploring this man-made "hyperreality," the works included here are characterized by "artificial" use of color, the "sampling" of disparate elements, and quasi-abstract patterns--presenting the viewer with a world that tends to exalt its very impermanence. The artists included are John Currin, Dexter Dalwood, Sharon Ellis, Chris Finley, Lisa Yuskavage, Michael Raedecker, David Thorpe, Takashi Murakami, Sarah Morris, Nancy Hobermann, L.C. Armstrong, Hans Broek, Damian Loeb, Jack Hallberg, Fred Tomaselli, and Paul Morrison.