The fifth presentation of A Lover’s Discourse
features Tasting it all, a new painting by London-based artist Issy Wood (b. 1993, USA) exhibited alongside Fernando Botero’s oil on canvas Lovers from 1982.
A new text by Wood accompanies the
display and expands on her long-time interest in
the volumetric figuration and stylized characters
championed by the renowned Colombian painter,
who passed away earlier this year. Wood’s new
work shows a larger-than-life can of Diet Coke
resting on its side. Lively and seemingly content
on its horizontal plane, this stretched object
takes up the full canvas and locks our gaze in
close. Physical proximity is a recurring spatial
motif in Wood’s work: her subjects—whether it
be a leather car seat, a self-portrait, an antique
ornament, or a pile of recyclable waste—tend
to materialize through unnerving close-ups and
focused crops derived from more expansive
scenes. Experiencing this closeness arouses
cravings, repulsions, intrusions, and desires. The
emotional scripts within Wood’s paintings recur
and mutate, never wearing out.
Surreal, oneiric, and feminist undertones in her
paintings and texts connect Wood with a lineage
of twentieth century artists including Leonora
Carrington and Lee Lozano. Her work is seen
here for the first time in conversation with the
practice of Fernando Botero, whose polarizing
paintings of swollen, exaggerated people and
objects have spilled into mainstream circuits in
his namesake style “Boterismo.” Committed to
figuration and realism, these two artists seem
drawn to reality merely as a foundational source
material. Interested in the semiotics of Botero’s
unabashedly massive bodily forms, Wood
chooses to juxtapose Lovers with a depiction
of the popular sugar-free drink, perhaps one
of America’s most successful attempts at
generating—and dealing with—both pleasure
and guilt.
Issy Wood’s paintings suggest a stream of
consciousness hiding something foreboding,
a medieval current creeping into the
millennial. Wood’s work is encrypted with
symbols that suggest a psyche trying to
consolidate its own interiority with social
forces and layers of history—exploring how
these tensions shape ideas of objectification,
desire, and value.
Major solo presentations of
Wood’s have been staged at institutions
including the Lafayette Anticipations, Paris
(2023–24); the Ilmin Museum of Art, Seoul
(2023); and Goldsmiths Centre for
Contemporary Art (CCA), London (2019). Her
work has also recently been presented at the
ICA Miami (2022); the Hayward Gallery,
London (2021); LACMA (2021); the Schinkel
Pavillon, Berlin (2019); amongst others.
Wood’s work is held in the permanent
collections of the Dallas Museum of Art;
Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; Hammer
Museum, Los Angeles; High Museum of Art,
Atlanta, GA; Institute of Contemporary Art
(ICA), Boston; Institute of Contemporary Art
(ICA), Miami; the National Portrait Gallery,
London; Rhode Island School of Design
(RISD) Museum, Providence; Sharjah Art
Foundation; Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing;
Start Museum, Shanghai; Tate, UK; X
Museum, Beijing; and Zabludowicz Collection,
London; amongst others.
Hours |
Tuesday–Sunday, 10 AM–6 PM
Closed Mondays
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General operating support is provided by Colorado Creative Industries. CCI and its activities are made possible through an annual appropriation from the Colorado General Assembly and federal funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.
General operating support is provided by Colorado Creative Industries. CCI and its activities are made possible through an annual appropriation from the Colorado General Assembly and federal funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.