Watch now: Rodney Graham, 'Painting Problems'

29 April 2020

Join Rodney Graham in the studio as he discusses a new body of work for Lisson Gallery, the so-called Painting Problems, collaged and derived from previous series and painterly personas created by the artist. These works will form the first of the gallery's Online Exhibitions (6 – 20 May) and inaugurate this new selling platform, as well as being available through the Frieze Art Fair viewing room (6 – 15 May).

Graham continues to inhabit the figure of a modernist painter, drawing on the vocabulary of 20th century art. Here, he further expands on the themes from the works presented in Vacuuming the Gallery, but splices together different styles, from Braque and Picasso, to Rodchenko and Fontana. Previous and recent painting series by Graham are also referenced, such as Possible Abstractions, based on a 1950s cartoon from a men’s magazine lampooning modern art; the Psychomania Variations, variants on a prop modernist painting in one of the sets of a 1970s British biker movie; the Inverted Drip Paintings that evolved from The Gifted Amateur lightbox, picturing an amateur painter inspired by a Morris Louis exhibition in 1962; and a series of recent polka dot relief paintings. Sampling aspects and fragments of these paintings, Graham has created a new style, with various new modernist compositions.