Thu 9/5 @ 10:30-11:30PMPM
The art world always seems to be looking for the next hot young thing, enthralled by the fresh-out-of-art-school breakout stars and precocious geniuses. Merlet Larsen is none of that. She’s nearly 80 and retired from teaching art at the University of South Florida. She didn’t have her first solo shows until she was in her 70s.
And her exhibit, The Ordinary Reoriented, now on display at the Akron Art Museum, is her first museum show. It features her intriguingly cockeyed paintings that scramble space and angles and perspective so that figures engaged in every-day activities are doing so in an imaginary setting that could not exist, defying the rules of nature. That the figures resemble wooden toys or cartoon figures and her color schemes are odd adds another layer of unreality.
According to Akron Art Museum Chief Curator Ellen Rudolph, “Larsen’s scenes should delight and confound viewers as they examine the impossible spatial structures that house the kinds of familiar situations we find ourselves in every day. Through her masterful construction of space, she is able to disorient-or reorient-workaday scenes to tease out the underlying psychological and interpersonal dynamics.”
The show is on view through 9/8, but you might want to get over to the museum on Thu 9/5 (which is also free admission day), when assistant curator Annie Wischmeyer will conduct a “Last Look” tour in the gallery to talk about the work, its influences and its meaning.
It’s free and open to all, but you must register. Go here.