Richard Limber combines traditional portraiture and nudes with art that responds to the politics of the moment in his exhibition at the Turpentine Gallery through Nov. 17: “I’m trying to put my art into the sphere of contemporary art in this country. I consider myself a middle-of-the-road artist, but in the context of the Vineyard, I’m considered a radical.”
Walking through the gallery with Limber, we move to a triptych of large pieces where he alters giant reproductions of Leonardo’s “Mona Lisa” with increasing degrees of intervention. In the first, he superimposes upon the breast of the Mona Lisa model, Lisa del Giocondo, a portrait of Jacob Blake, who was shot by police in the back seven times around the time of the George Floyd killing. Where Gioconda’s expression is enigmatic, Blake’s straightforward gaze leaves us wondering what he was thinking behind those eyes that look right into our souls. “I like the idea of these two faces competing,” says Limber.
He repeats the first composition in the second work, but increases the dichotomy between contemporary and traditional renderings by superimposing a central column of politically related art. On the floor is a newspaper article about immigration and bright red plastic cups, creating the sense of a contemporary altar echoing those in Renaissance churches.
Looking at this middle piece, Limber says, “I’m always trying to experiment. It’s a form of play. I may come back and add more to it when the show’s been up a while.”
For the third Mona Lisa reproduction, Limber asked a teenager, Seth Hyde, to respond to the iconic image with spray paint. The resulting work is reminiscent of late 1970s urban graffiti art. “The real life in the arts here, I think, is more in the younger people,” Limber offers.
“It’s about subverting the ‘Mona Lisa’ by putting other images on top. It’s similar to how we are rethinking art we’ve put on pedestals, [and asking] who made it, what they made it for? It’s about how you turn the image upside down.”
Limber has also included two large variations of his portrait of Alisa Perebyinis, altering one by superimposing various smaller portraits on top of it. The figure is based on a photograph from the New York Times of a child who was killed by a Russian mortar early in the war in Ukraine. However, while painting her face, Limber discovered that he had transformed the 9-year-old into a young woman. About this transformation, he tells me, “So I thought, This one is an idealized vision of what the kid might have looked like when she grew up.”
He also increases the contrast between traditional and contemporary art by printing the words “Child Killed,” “Putin,” and “A Lost Future” on top of the appealing rendering of the woman. Limber added portraits, one of Trump, another of Martin Luther King, and an anonymous face. “I was basically playing with darker compositions and placing them to make the work a little more ominous. That’s part of the impulse to alter it — to make it more interesting.”
One entire wall in the gallery is filled with quickly rendered portraits, and another with nudes. Limber lays down acrylic ink on wet paper to start, which allows the pigment to bleed, similar to painting with watercolors. As a piece dries, he returns with defining marks. “There’s a time element to it. You have to stay on your toes like a performance,” he comments. Having done life drawing and that of cadavers over the years, Limber feels this technique forces him away from careful rendering.
Next, we look at a painting of a young John Lewis on paper that he has placed on top of a light board, which makes the colors translucent, drawing attention to Limber’s markmaking: “It is a way of dramatizing what otherwise might have been a muddy picture.”
Limber sometimes makes prints of an original work, and then changes them in some way, playing with the idea of an artwork as a precious object. “It allows you to run with it, as opposed to when something isn’t quite right, do something with it, but not being able to go back if you overthink it.”
About his new exhibition, Limber shares, “I want to demonstrate that you can open up the bandwidth by showing both traditional techniques and ones that are not. I hope, too, that artists see the show and think, We can experiment with our work. Also, there’s a lot of play here, and I hope people see that it is taking on serious issues at the same time.”
Richard Limber’s new exhibition is on view at the Turpentine Gallery through Nov. 17. turpentinegallery.art.