A n intensely rich optical puzzle spliced by animated overlapping forms and labyrinthine charcoal lines, Population of Forms from 2011 offers fragmented glimpses of gnashing teeth, puritan bowties, voluptuous bodies and ogling eyes that clash, churn, and collide within George Condo’s whimsical artistic vision. Capturing the raw dynamism and psychological power of the artist’s recent work, the frenzied visual complexity of this polygonal mass of entangled forms epitomizes Condo’s ingenious treatment of the contemporary psyche. As exaggerated features and disjointed body parts wildly collide across fragmented, abstract planes, we glimpse flashes of each of the artist’s most important touchstones: Old Master portraits, his own brand of ‘psychological Cubism,’ cartoon references, and a commitment to constantly pushing the boundaries that separate figurative and non-representational painting. An example of his continued series of Drawing Paintings, the present work synergizes the traditionally separate processes of drawing and painting into one fluid gestural expression. Heralding an unprecedented creative fervor of spontaneous mark-making, the present work departs from Condo’s more carefully planned portrait paintings toward a reckless embrace of line, color, and form. Ultimately, Population of Forms revels in the unforeseen beauty and wildly alluring entropy of Condo’s improvisational genius.

In Population of Forms the emotive content of Condo’s iconic style is brought to the fore: joy, terror, hilarity, fury, and ecstasy collide in a riot of teeth, eyes, cheeks, chests, and other indistinguishable features that bridge the gap between an emotional state and a physical reality. The resulting chaos visually articulates the complicated modern psyche. Crushed together in a bizarre and nonsensical composition, the figures’ heads align along the same horizontal axis, below and above which their bodies are fragmented into disjointed planes of muted color. Within a Cubist topography, sensuous lines and Cézanne-like passages of flat color overlap in a densely layered web of unrestrained abstraction, infused with a sense of rhythm and polyphony that stems from Condo’s spontaneous, gestural improvisations. Executed at a moment in his career when he had pushed his signature “pod” figures to the limits, Population of Forms witnesses the artist breaking them down, tinkering with their parts, and welding them back together in new and inventive configurations.

This explosive and chimerical synthesis evocatively recalls Pablo Picasso’s masterful Cubist facture; yet, where Picasso radically shattered the picture plane to explore multiple viewpoints in the same moment, Condo ruptures his compositions to reveal the multifaceted and kaleidoscopic complexities of human emotion through his aptly self-termed mode of psychological cubism. “I try to depict a character’s train of thoughts simultaneously – hysteria, joy, sadness, desperation,” the artist explains. “If you could see these things at once that would be like what I’m trying to make you see in my art” (The artist in Stuart Jeffries, “George Condo: ‘I Was Delirious. Nearly Died’,” The Guardian, 10 February 2014, online). While Picasso’s fractured and distorted forms have long been a source of influence for Condo, the Drawing Paintings mark a new area of exploration for the artist. In works such as the present, Condo has expanded his remit to reach deeper into mid-century movements for inspiration, incorporating painterly techniques evocative of Lee Krasner and Willem de Kooning, and geometric configurations that recall the vibrant, abstract paintings of Wassily Kandinsky. By no means a purely abstract composition, however, the painting teeters on the periphery of representation as a myriad of half-formed, clown-like visages tantalizingly emerge and recede across the picture plane. Condo’s practice is deeply concerned with examining representations of the figure throughout art history, and the genre of portraiture is elevated to a position of tremendous importance within his creative output. Woven into the fabric of his paintings is a renewed interest in inserting art historical tropes in a playful and absurd new context that simultaneously revives, and humorously undermines, the integrity of portraiture. For Condo, it is the imaginary potential of portraits that defines the genre; as such, the artist tends to paint from his own mental snapshot or emotional reaction, rather than from life.

Population of Forms reveals the illustrious glory and ingenuity of an artist in the surging height of his career. Unlike any preceding series, the present work marvels in Condo’s intellectual game that obfuscates and blurs the traditional delineations between drawing and painting, finished and unfinished, balanced and unbalanced, and flat two-dimensionality versus sculptural depth. Exuding a mystifyingly psychological aura with gorgeous permutations of line, color, and form, Population of Forms endures as a stunning reminder of Condo’s elusive genius in the act of abstraction.