Nathan Ritterpusch | Lustre

About

Bringing together three distinct groups of paintings, the exhibition imagines the emotional longings and desires of an aspirational middle class residing just before the artist’s birth. Using the British spelling, "Lustre" refers to both the polished gloss surface of the work and the faux sophistication associated with the allure of all things foreign.

The paintings included in the artist’s "Old Enough to Be My Mother" series are largely based off of men's magazines from the 1960's. They explore contemporary notions of beauty, the ephemeral nature of life and Ritterpusch’s curious relationship to the women that are contemporaries of his mother. The canvases from this series are used to create the artist’s mylar "Head" paintings. These works are generated through an accumulation of "pressings" where the mylar sheet is laid directly on the wet canvas and an image is generated by an amalgamation of different paintings. A third group of larger works, teeming with humor and contradiction, provides an insight into the day-to-day environment in which these women exist.