The Senseless Cycle, Tender and Benign, Bring Great Comfort

Since the early 1980s, Lari Pittman has meticulously painted visually complex canvases inspired by such diverse sources as the Pattern and Decoration movement of the 1970s, pop-cultural logos, queer politics, graphic design, body and identity issues, and 19th-century silhouettes. His raucous canvases are punctuated with an energetic juxtaposition of figurative and abstract imagery and text, including phrases, exclamations, and singular words. Pittman’s intensely rich and highly personalized vocabulary of symbols fills his works from edge to edge without a decipherable hierarchical structure. The artist stated: "Why should surface embellishment be declassified or culturally regarded as lesser? Decoration alone is not enough; the world is full of that. But what an odd combination: surface embellishment and meaning."