ANTHONY LISTER
How to Catch a Time Traveler
Exhibition Dates: March 19 – April 19, 2010
Artist Reception: Friday, March 19th, 7-10pm
Lyons Wier Gallery is pleased to present Anthony Lister’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, How to Catch a Time Traveler. The exhibition follows directly on the heals of Lister’s 50-foot, site-specific mural, “Red Dot”, created specifically for the Pulse Art Fair, NYC (2010), showcasing Lister’s undeniable signature style that has garnered him international acclaim.
Known in the Low Brow movement for his intriguing, playful hybrid of street art, expressionism, and cubism all manifested in non-traditional media such as spray paint; Lister’s new body of work shows the tongue-in-cheek frivolity of his earlier pieces developing (or decaying) into a more mature and disturbing direction. The deformities and un-done aesthetic resolve of Lister’s work provides viewers with a concretization of contemporary societies’ psyche – or, as the artist himself states, “making the obvious more, well, obvious”.
In his latest series, Lister continues his examination of pop culture and how a generation raised on American television processes and interprets the symbols and imagery of their youth. The result is gender bending cartoon characters, superheroes such as Wonder Woman and Bat Girl, and other villains of unusual shape and size, that uncover the unconscious sexual desires and repressed taboos embedded in these seemingly innocuous popular icons. The artist insists that his paintings have no overarching message or sociological comment, he simply sees his superheroes and villains as the classical gods and goddesses of our modern society, and likes to toy with the symbols and characters so many of us have grown up with.
The work contains a circular perspective, one that shifts between, even confuses the non-rational inner workings of the child and adult mind. Yet this inescapable paradox of the human condition, wherein we are at all times evolving from and dependant upon the experiences of youth, is unlocked by Lister’s painterly antics, and revealed to be the utterly serious and impossibly ridiculous condition it is. Lister’s practice is indeed about reality. A reality his work does not claim to resolve, but rather to question, loudly.
Anthony Lister has shown widely internationally in solo exhibitions at Metro 5, Melbourne; K Gallery, Milan; Spectrum Gallery, London; Criterion Gallery, Hobart; and the Wooster Collective, New York; among others. His work has appeared in numerous publications including Artforum, Australian Art Collector, Vogue Magazine, Modern Painters, Paper Magazine, Art in America and VICE Magazine. Lister’s work is present in many reputable collections including the National Gallery of Australia, the David Roberts Collection, the TVS Partnership and the BHP Collection. Lister is the receipient of the Prometheus Award (2009, 2005), the Dobell Prize for Drawing (2008) and the ABN Amro Art Award (2007).
Gallery Hours: Monday - Saturday 11-7, Sun. 12-6
Subway: C, E exit 23rd @ 8th Ave. 1, 9 exit 23rd @ 7th Ave.
