Dennis Kardon's Paintings at Valentine Gallery Explore Perverse Modernist Traditions

Dennis Kardon's exhibition at Valentine Gallery presents paintings that continue renegade modernist traditions, drawing from sources like late de Chirico's bastardized pittura metafisica, transgressive Picabia works, and 1980s "Bad" painting. His work transforms subjects into unsettling imagery, exemplified by "Anticipating Disaster," which features an ambivalent orb with vaginal wings sprouting from a melting icecap, redefining the concept of the "anxious object." Another painting includes a shape wrapped in crinkly silver foil suggesting an unwelcome joint of meat. These elements are placed within still life settings that ambiguously read as tabletops or eerie architectural spaces of indefinable scale. Kardon demonstrates mastery in creating discomfort through decomposing compositions where chance encounters of unhappy couples occur. The artist is described as the Midas of perversity, turning whatever his brush touches into ickiness, establishing him as a legitimate heir to these transgressive painting lineages.