Beschreibung:

Robert Longo On the Beach (Last Wave) 2004 Charcoal on paper. 60 x 76 3/4 in. (152.4 x 194.9 cm). Signed and dated "Robert Longo 2004" lower right.
Provenance Metro Pictures Gallery, New York Exhibited Metro Pictures, Robert Longo The Sickness of Reason, February 20 - March 24, 2004 Catalogue Essay Robert Longo’s work exists somewhere between cinema, monument, and nightmare. Often using the seduction of cinematic scale as metaphor, Longo explores social, political, and psychosexual representations of power and control. His pictorial language responds to a visual culture dominated by mass media and entertainment. Best known for his large-format black-and white drawings based on found and staged photographic sources, Longo has also worked with sculpture, painting, installation, music video, commercial film and performance. Consistent throughout his work is an attention to formalism, draftsmanship, and spectacle. H. Chen, Whitney Biennial 2004, New York, 2004, p. 204 In 2002 Robert Longo produced a series of massive drawings entitled Monsters which depicted thunderous, crashing waves. The menacing crests, capturing the unrestrained energy of the accompanying crash, were testimonies to nature’s great physical force. The work On the Beach (Last Wave) from 2004 shares the subject’s vastness and power. An ocean with parallel breakers is rendered in smooth charcoal with photographic exactitude. The high contrast black and white rendering significantly emphasizes the formal qualities of the waves; in Longo’s sampling of the sea, they become a pattern of horizontal bands. With its close up view of the ocean’s stretch, contrasting tonalities and awe-striking, monumental scale, the work stands as a stunning representation of abstracted nature. Read More