Lisa Yuskavage

Little Day Little Night, 1999

Long Lake Estates

Born in 1962 in Philadelphia, Lisa Yuskavage is a unique figurative painter currently working in New York City.

For more than thirty years, she has challenged conventional understandings of the genre. Her simultaneously bold, eccentric, exhibitionist, and introspective characters assume dual roles of subject and object, complicating the position of viewership. At times playful and harmonious, and at other times rueful and conflicted, these characters are cast within fantastical compositions in which realistic and abstract elements coexist and color determines meaning. While the artist's painterly techniques evoke art historical precedents, her motifs are often inspired by popular culture, creating an underlying dichotomy between high and low and, by implication, sacred and profane, harmony and dissonance.

From a review of the exhibition Babie Brood including Little Day, Little Night:

“Throughout the evolution of Yuskavage’s work one constant has been a haze of adolescent confusion. Her girl-women express a sense of wonder and disquiet at the uncontrollable morphing of their bodies and the eruption of strange new desires. In their sun drenched landscapes and fruit filled interiors, these characters have seemed caught between a longing for infantile security and their emerging sexuality.

Solo exhibitions include

• David Zwirner and Zwirner & Wirth, New York

• Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (2000)

• Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva (2001)

• Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City (2006)

• The Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin (organized as part of Dublin Contemporary 2011)

Lisa Yuskavage: New Paintings & Babie Brood

Art in America: Lisa Yuskavage