"This December, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami set the stage for a sweeping survey of the late American painter Joyce Pensato, whose unmistakable hand shaped a new visual language in contemporary art. The exhibition, the most comprehensive of her career to date, gathered over 60 works spanning five decades. It not only mapped her evolution from gestural abstraction to her iconic black-and-white pop culture figuration but also cemented her legacy as one of America's most genre-defying painters."
"In the early 1990s, Pensato turned to enamel as her medium of choice, a decision that allowed her brushwork to take on a bold, graffiti-like quality. These works, featuring distorted versions of Felix the Cat, Disney icons, and even South Park characters, captured the tension between humor and menace that defined her visual approach. Her Batman series remained central, its iterations haunting and humorous in equal measure, showing how Pensato could mine the same subject for decades without losing its charge."
"What made Pensato's practice singular was her ability to take beloved cultural icons and twist them into grotesque, mesmerizing forms. Her black-and-white palette stripped the figures of their comforting familiarity, leaving behind raw emotion and unsettling intensity. The playful characters of childhood - Mickey Mouse, Elmo, and others - emerged in her work as both comic and terrifying, embodying the darker undercurrents of American pop culture."
The ICA Miami presentation assembled over 60 works spanning five decades, charting Pensato’s evolution from gestural abstraction to black-and-white pop-culture figuration. Early frenetic Batman drawings from 1976 sit alongside large enamel paintings of Felix the Cat, Disney icons, and South Park characters, revealing a continuous engagement with popular imagery. In the early 1990s Pensato embraced enamel, allowing bold, graffiti-like brushwork and a glossy, aggressive surface. Her practice repeatedly mines the same subjects—most notably Batman—while amplifying tension between humor and menace. The black-and-white palette and distorted forms strip familiarity away, producing work both comic and terrifying.
Read at stupidDOPE | Est. 2008
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