Mark Grotjahn (ASPEN ART PRESS)

The paintings and drawings of Los Angeles artist Mark Grotjahn (born 1968) collide abstract and figurative elements into spider-webbed splinters that skew traditional perspective and dazzle the eye. This fully illustrated catalogue constitutes the first survey of his work from the late 1990s to the present and features essays by the art critic Barry Schwabsky and Aspen Art Museum Director Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson. The catalogue chronicles Grotjahn’s series of Butterfly paintings and drawings, in which he combines varying schemes of one-point perspective and a systematic investigation of color to mesmerizing effect; his penetrating flower and face paintings; and a recent series of “mask” sculptures that extend Grotjahn’s idiosyncratic investment in process and ritual in painting into three dimensions.