Robert Longo re-envisages his Combines of the 1980s in Searchers, a two-part exhibition presented at Thaddaeus Ropac and Pace in London. His monumental new multimedia works reflect the breadth of the American artist’s career-long experimentation with the visual potential of different media. On view at Thaddaeus Ropac, Untitled (Pilgrim) extends to over seven metres in width and is composed of five panels, each executed in a different medium. Comprising a charcoal drawing, a video, a painting, a sculpture and a photograph, in the new works Longo explores the potential of ‘making a Combine in every way to see an image’ and, as the artist explains, in ‘almost every way that I could work.’ Conceived as a pair, Untitled (Pilgrim) will be presented concurrently with a second new Combine, Untitled (Hunter), on view at Pace, and coincides with Longo’s major solo exhibitions at the ALBERTINA Museum, Vienna and Milwaukee Art Museum.
With the new Combines Longo explores the idea of the artist as a ‘searcher’ as he actively seeks out images from the world around him. Informed by Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein’s theory of montage and art critic John Berger’s foundational text WaysofSeeing (1972), he juxtaposes art-historical images with film stills, advertisements, videos of elemental forces and journalistic photographs of natural and human catastrophes to examine how meaning is made and disseminated in contemporary society. Returning to the format after four decades, Longo offers a re-reading of John Berger in the context of our digital age, particularly the impact of social media on our strategies of interpretation, with each panel of the new works evoking the proportions of a mobile phone screen, recalling the sensation of endless scrolling through social media.
| Duration | 08 October 2024 - 20 November 2024 |
| Times | Tuesday—Saturday, 10am—6pm |
| Cost | Free |
| Venue | Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac |
| Address | Ely House, 37 Dover Street, London, W1S 4NJ |
| Contact | 4402038138400 / polly.gaer@ropac.net / www.ropac.net |