
MERNET LARSEN
Solar System, Explained (after El Lissitzky), 2020
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
52 x 55 in
132.1 x 139.7 cm
(JCG11681)
MERNET LARSEN
Behind the Eight Ball
2019
Acrylic on canvas
53 x 60 1/4 in
134.6 x 153 cm
JCG11027
MERNET LARSEN
Kindergarten, 2019
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
64 x 52 3/4 in
162.6 x 134 cm
(JCG10839)
Collection of Akron Art Museum, Purchased with funds from The Mary S. and Louis S. Myers Endowment Fund for Painting and Sculpture
MERNET LARSEN
Pause
2019
Acrylic on canvas
63 1/4 x 42 1/4 in
160.7 x 107.3 cm
JCG11022
MERNET LARSEN
Situation Room with Angst
2018
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
60 x 67 in
152.4 x 170.2 cm
JCG10380
MERNET LARSEN
Drawing Hands
2017
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
67 1/2 x 36 1/4 in.
171.5 x 92.1 cm
JCG9410
MERNET LARSEN
Cup Tricks
2018
Acrylic and mixed media on cavnas
57 x 38 1/4 in.
144.78 x 97.2 cm
JCG9749
MERNET LARSEN
Cabinet Meeting
2017
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
61 x 65 1/4 in.
154.9 x 165.7 cm
JCG9711
MERNET LARSEN
Perplexed
2017
Oil on canvas
48 1/4 x 49 5/8 in.
122.6 x 126 cm
JCG9010
MERNET LARSEN
Punch
2016
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
68 1/2 x 61 1/2 in.
174 x 156.2 cm
JCG9012
MERNET LARSEN
Bunt, 2016
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
64 x 50 1/4 in
162.6 x 127.6 cm
(JCG8544)
JCG9011
MERNET LARSEN
Skydiver
2016
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
65 x 53 in.
165.1 x 134.6 cm
JCG8282
MERNET LARSEN
Misstep
2015
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
50 x 60 in.
127 x 152.4 cm
JCG8182
MERNET LARSEN
Chainsawer and Bicyclist
2014
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
49 x 49 1/2 in.
124.5 x 125.7 cm
JCG8200
MERNET LARSEN
Reading in Bed
2015
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
60 x 38 1/4 in.
152.4 x 99.7 cm
JCG8263
MERNET LARSEN
Alphie
2015
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas.
72 x 39 in.
182.9 x 99.1 cm
JCG8197
MERNET LARSEN
Frontier
2015
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
64 x 52 1/2 in.
162.6 x 133.4 cm
JCG8180
MERNET LARSEN
Campers
2015
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
52 1/2 x 64 in.
133.4 x 162.6 cm
JCG8181
MERNET LARSEN
Dawn (after El Lissitzky), 2012
Acrylic and tracing paper on canvas
49 1/2 x 58 in
125.7 x 147.3 cm
JCG11450
MERNET LARSEN
Seminar
2011
Acrylic on canvas
59 x 40 in.
149.9 x 101.6 cm
JCG9285
MERNET LARSEN
Lecture
2011
Acrylic on canvas
58 x 36 in.
147.3 x 91.4 cm
JCG9271
MERNET LARSEN
Mall Walkers, 2009
Acrylic, mixed media on canvas
54 x 25 1/4 in
137.2 x 64.1 cm
(ZNI0553)
MERNET LARSEN
Committee
2007
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
36 x 68 in.
91.4 x 172.7 cm
JCG9698
MERNET LARSEN
Couple
2005
Acrylic and tracing paper on canvas
42 x 22 in.
106.7 x 55.9 cm
JCG8167
MERNET LARSEN
Ambush, 2003-2004
Acrylic, pastel, tracing paper, oil on canvas
45 1/2 x 63 1/2 in
115.6 x 161.3 cm
(ZNI0168)
Collection Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Gift of Middle Road Foundation, New York, 2015.
For over six decades, Mernet Larsen has created narrative paintings depicting hard-edged, enigmatic characters that inhabit an uncanny parallel world filled with tension and wry humor. Larsen employs various spatial systems that often contradict: combining reverse, isometric, and conventional perspectives, she casts everyday scenarios into a vertigo-inducing version of reality akin to our own. Drawing from influences that range from the non-objective geometries of Russian Constructivism to Bunraku puppet theater and Indian miniatures, her works take compositional cues from art of the past as springboards for uniquely spatial figure-paintings that speak to the anxieties of the present. Developed over the last 40 years, Larsen’s independent and meticulous approach to representational painting “reaches toward, not from, life.”
Larsen’s interest in representation stems from a turning-point in 1999, about which she recalls: “I decided that I wanted to paint old-fashioned narrative paintings with volume and depth and the essences of significant actions. I developed a longing for pictures evoking a classical sense of permanence, solidity, in the spirit of 15th century Italian painting. But I knew that essences must be constructed, not uncovered.” With an emphasis on paring down, understanding, and manipulating the spatial elements of narrative painting, in the decades that followed Larsen sought to utilize the language of abstraction—rather than illusionism—as a means to access a more authentic form of representation. Delving into the non-objective compositions of touchstones such as Kazimir Malevich, Sophie Tauber-Arp, and most significantly El Lissitzky, Larsen riffs off of abstract forms as parameters for free-association, slowly building geometric structure into a psychological ordering of space to construct what curator Veronica Roberts calls “some of the most beguiling and psychologically complex narrative paintings of the 21st century.”
Mernet Larsen (b. 1940, Houghton, Michigan) has exhibited extensively since the late 1970s and has been the subject of over thirty solo exhibitions, including Mernet Larsen: The Ordinary, Reoriented, Akron Art Museum, 2019, and Getting Measured: Mernet Larsen, 1957-2017, Tampa Museum of Art, 2017. She has been featured in more than seventy group exhibitions, including presentations at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C., the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY and multiple other exhibitions in London and New York. Her work is in numerous collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; the Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art, Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida; the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel; and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, among others. Larsen received her BFA from the University of Florida, and her MFA from Indiana University. She lives and works between Tampa, Florida and Jackson Heights, New York.