Mark Grotjahn: Circus Circus

Mark Grotjahn (b. Pasadena, 1968; lives and works in Los Angeles) ranks among the best-known American painters of his generation. His heterogeneous oeu- vre includes depictions of anthropomorphic plants and masks as well as co- lorful abstract compositions in oil or wax crayon. After 1997, he also produced numerous monochromes. Grotjahn's "Butterfly" and "Face" paintings are ani- mated by a dynamic dialectic between gestural representation and formalist structure. The lavishly designed book "Circus Circus" presents a selection of paintings from Grotjahn's new "Circus" series as well as a "Mask" bronze sculp- ture. The ambitious polychromatic works combine the geometric rigor of the "Butterfly" series with the gestural facture of the "Face" pictures, in which pri- mary facial symbols emerge from flowing streams of color. The essays by Caroline Käding and Mark Prince analyze the "Circus" series in light of the painterly traditions on which it draws and examine its place in Grotjahn's oeuvre.