Lyn Liu: Dogville
Past exhibition
-
-
Kasmin is pleased to present Dogville, an exhibition of new paintings by Lyn Liu (b. 1993, Beijing). Liu’s work addresses the psychological tension underpinning relationships between individuals through a sequence of uncanny cinematic tableaux. Comprised of paintings realized between 2019–2022, the exhibition draws from the artist’s personal experiences of alienation, utilizing symbolism and an atmosphere of the absurd to provoke reflections on what Liu considers our oppressive social reality. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition.
-
-
Conceiving of her compositions as stills in an overarching though dislocated narrative, the artist takes a filmic approach to considerations of light, staging, and costume. Depicting scenes often situated in the evening or at night, Liu’s tightly rendered dreamscapes feature figures whose identities are concealed, masked, presented alongside a doppelganger, or hidden in shadow. This voyeurist instinct—a longing to see without being seen—acts both as a visual strategy and a window into the artist’s experience as a child, when she traveled between cultures feeling like a perpetual outsider.
-
-
The striking symbols in Liu’s paintings pulsate with a nihilist or existentialist philosophy in the vein of Albert Camus and Franz Kafka, whose work the artist has referenced throughout her oeuvre. In Huggermugger (2022), a rotund, diamond-patterned structure conceals the identity of two bartenders who offer glasses of what might be champagne yet carry the risk of poison. Liu’s interest in the book The Architectural Uncanny by Anthony Vidler further elaborates on the metaphorical potential of buildings and interiors in the work to speak to our modern condition.
-
-
The artist repeatedly returns to animal subjects as counterparts to her human figures, such as in Conference and Cherry Pie (both 2019). Recognizing both wild and domesticated animals as unknowable, unpredictable, and potentially dangerous, Liu’s use of ostriches, frogs, and kangaroos as symbols occasions a fissure between the cycle of mutual observation found in human society. Employed here, they act to highlight the confusion of spectacle and the sense of alienation that can attend a condition of being observed.
-
-
Works
-
-
About the Artist
Portrait by Charlie Rubin -
Explore
-
Robert Indiana:
February 27 – March 29, 2025 509 West 27th Street, New York
The Source, 1959–1969Kasmin presents Robert Indiana: The Source, 1959–1969, a focused survey of the transformative decade in which Indiana established his unique artistic language, achieving wide recognition and cementing his place as an icon of American art. Featuring 20 works drawn exclusively from the artist’s personal collection as endowed by Indiana to the Star of Hope Foundation, the exhibition includes an example from the artist’s first edition of LOVE sculptures, conceived in 1966 and executed between 1966—1968, and a vitrine display of archival materials including some of the artist’s journals. This exhibition marks Kasmin’s first collaboration with the Star of Hope Foundation, which was established by the artist in his lifetime, and the gallery’s eighth solo exhibition of work by Indiana since 2003. -
Pablo Dávila:
February 27 – March 29, 2025 297 Tenth Avenue, New York
Why Did You Take My Watch?The first solo exhibition of Mexico City-based artist Pablo Dávila (b. 1983), Why Did You Take My Watch? features new works that iterate Dávila’s research-based process in various media. Employing a visual language to encapsulate complex systems, theories and ideas, Dávila’s works offer poetic reflections on the perception of time and space.
-
