Frieze New York 2018
May 03 - May 06, 2018
Frieze New York 2018
May 03 - May 06, 2018 Patrick Saytour's commedia dell'arte
At age 83, Patrick Saytour, the uncontested master of the High and the Low, continues to inspire his artistic practice with discord and irony. While he is historically associated with the Supports/Surfaces movement because of the formal innovations demonstrated in his early work, his irreverent humor distinguishes him from his more austere comrades. The work he produces from the clutter of daily life and the kitsch of our lowest aspirations would be more appropriately contextualized as an art of the real, having greater affinities with Nouveau Réalisme, Pop Art or even Capitalist Realism. Hand-made, machine-made and ready-made performative objects, sculptural paintings or pictorial environments: his production defies categorization. Like commedia dell'arte, the work is based on improvisation, with an aesthetic of exaggeration, distortion and anti-humanism that is as disconcerting as it is fascinating. Patrick Saytour's work is collected by modern and contemporary art museums all over the world including the MoMA in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the CAPC in Bordeaux. He has been honored with solo exhibitions at the Musée Ingres, Montauban; The Calder Foundation, Saché; and Musée d’Art Moderne, Céret.
Rachel Stella, 2017.