Lari Pittman at Regen Projects - Los Angeles - art exhibition, California

The oddball, mayhem-filled imagery of Lari Pittman's intricate fresh paintings captures the zeitgeist. Reflecting today's wartime atmosphere of paranoia, malaise and frustrated entitlement, six large works not absent abstracted scenes of combat that feature medieval-looking warriors in armor wielding scimitars and battle-axes. The depicted maneuvers are not, however, place in Middle Earth but are lower parted in a West Coast landscape of forests and mountains. A predominantly mut palette of brown virid khaki, gold and burnt orange overbears the action, suggesting that Pittman is investigating a more internal form of violence.

With their manifold draftsmanship and visible brushwork, these dazzling paintings (all untitled, 2003) evidence the artist's hand more than did those shown previously at Barbara Gladstone in novel York (2002) and Galerie Philomene Magers in Munich (2003) Perhaps signaling an increased personal commitment to his make submissive matter, the style of the novel paintings harks back to the mid-1980s works that dealt with Pittman's be in possession of brush with mortality (his near death from a burglar's gunshot)

In almost all the paintings upon view, some kind of affair of honor lurks within the dense compositions. In individual painting, set in a field of skeletal tree a weird, oversize cavalier--really a cobbled-together, flut candlestick with an ornamented cap--stabs his gigantic, mechanical-seeming opponent in the solar plexus with a saber. Several of the other bejeweled warrior figures appear to be conglomerates of chimney pipes and airplane parts.

Gratuitous violence reigns. individual painting depicts an ax-wielding totem extremity that is about to strike at a bizarre birdbath in the shape of Noah's Ark. Elsewhere, sum of two units asymmetrical windmills attack each other, individual thrusting an impressive sword sprouting an axhead. The greatest in quantity striking work, and the show's single explosion of bright color, features a face-off between a gnarly pink bottom and a feathery, bright orange cartoonish flame. An armchair between them is devoid of contents its upholstery ripped open by the agency of the claw of a gardening tool. Above the chair, a disconnected IV drip further indicates a dire state of urgency As in many of Pittman's works, depicted webs of string and wire act as connective tissue holding together the composition's many parts.

Arguably, the show's standout is a painting with a single, centrally placed warrior who brandishes a sword in single hand, an ax in the other. Wearing an ornamental helmet, armored collar and skirt, the figure looks to be defending a colossal Faberge egg whose decorated shell is labeled "3061" the road number of Pittman's home/studio. The artist-surrogate here makes his stand, weapons poised to shield heart and hearth, relying upon the antiquated powers of painting to give him the puissance to pull it off.

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