PAUL LATISLAW
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PAUL LATISLAW •
Something About Everything, 2023. Felted Wool, 29 x 9 x 7 inches.
KIPNZ is pleased to present The Glad Game, an exhibition of paintings and felted wool sculptures by emerging artist Paul Latislaw.
Inspired by the theatrical stage sets and exaggerated characters of early stop-motion animation, Paul Latislaw’s works are infused with both humor and the grotesque. Cartoonishly rounded landscapes and figures with impishly bulbous features populate Latislaw’s artworks, setting the stage for a playful tension of the innocent and the slightly deranged.
Homestead, 2024. Acrylic on canvas, 68 x 52 inches.
The Glad Game—a reference to the 1913 children’s book Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter—connects these works to the game Pollyanna would play, even in the darkest of times, to force herself to always see the good in every situation; often at the cost of ignoring reality. For Latislaw, this directive to embrace all situations with a smile propels his cast of characters into a bacchanal of delusion, irrepressible innocence, insistent suppression and exuberant absurdity.
Laboriously transforming needle felted wool into richly animated sculptures, Latislaw presents us with the denizens of this mind-game: a drunken ‘come-hither’ horse with twisting legs; a bear, a goose, and a rabbit dragging a captive chicken caught in a dramatic bar fight; and a sheep escaping the chaos in a breezy ‘contrapposto’ mid-step: an elegantly disheveled sweater and a casually slung tote bag, replete with a stolen bottle of liquor, infuse this narrative with camp, queerness and irreverence. For Latislaw, each figure informs the following one in a slow process of “neurotic story-building.” The concrete details of the narrative are not as important to the artist, however, as the formal and creative possibilities each part of the sequence affords—each arrangement allowing for new associations and imagining. Despite their child-like appearance, each sculpture is meticulously crafted; curved and flowing details revisited and perfected. With their off-white hue perched atop white pedestals, the sculptures allude to traditional marble statuary but are composed of wool—a soft material with working class and craft associations.
Bar Fight: Scene I, 2021/2024. Felted Wool, 42 x 12 x 12 inches.
The artist’s landscape paintings are made in tandem with the sculptures. While not initially conceived as connected with the figures, the artist’s recurring interest in the play between mythical and real connect both sequences. Similarly infused with dream-like curving shapes, for Latislaw, the paintings have become a backdrop to this afflicted stage set. Painted in acrylic on canvas, the paintings share the pillowy forms of the sculptures, working as an insistent fantasy of actual nature. The idea of an unadulterated landscape as a clean slate—a place for narrative yet to be placed—is a point of fascination for the artist. Together, the sculptures and paintings create an entire picture, character and environment, for a world that is at once humorous and brimming with mischievous potential.
Paul Latislaw was born in Los Angeles, California. He graduated with a BA from Sarah Lawrence College in 2016. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
A Little Play, 2024. Acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 inches.
Champagne Shower, 2024. Felted Wool, 45 x 27 x 24 inches.