Like You

This monumentally sized work is comprised of five panels. Lari Pittman has filled up the painting, flattening perspective and making each panel sparkle with activity. By bringing everything to the surface, Pittman creates a device upon which to layer more. Pittman’s work does not easily break down into typical binaries, and here he actively seeks to disrupt them. The imagery is both interior and exterior, decorative and narrative, graphic and painterly. The work depicts an event in full swing — an upheaval of order, perhaps a riot or a parade with androgynous thong-wearing revelers and hands that could be praying or clapping. The scale and the amount of imagery in Pittman’s painting are aggressively magnanimous. Rendered in exquisite detail, the overflowing canvas presents nuanced complexities and the city portrayed may even be Los Angeles in the aftermath of the 1992 riots.