What the Gallery Says: “The exhibition brings together paintings and drawings from the late sixties to early eighties, all shown in London for the first time. The selection of works focuses on the artist’s landscape painting which, utilising the monuments of the road, is rooted in a collective American experience… Using carefully chosen iconography and repeated signs, the works ask questions about the American psyche in a modern, changing America.”
Why It’s Worth a Look: The show transposes the viewer into a pan-American road trip, watching post-industrial landscapes fly by through a car window (it’s really worth an in-person look to get a sense of the scale of the work). From road signs and electricity pylons, to underpasses and empty stretches of desert and sky, the narrative of the American highway evokes ideas of pilgrimage and discovery, and inevitably raises questions about where we are headed.
“Pi in the Sky” is on view through March 10, 2018.
Waddington Custot is located at 11 Cork Street, W1S 3LT, London.
-Naomi Rea