Ulrich Lamsfuss

The nine paintings that comprise Ulrich Lamsfuss’s LA debut at Daniel Hug Gallery can also currently be seen in New York at Lombard-Freid Projects, where they are apparently hung in a similar arrangement. This conceptual teaser by the artist, also echoed in the exhibition’s pair of nearly identical nudes, is a recurring strategy. Lamsfuss paints images lifted from various photographic sources—advertising, fashion spreads, documentary archives—but while the seemingly random and disconnected subject matter (here he has selected a BMW motor, tomatoes, a nude woman posing with perfume bottle, and a skinny young man in striped undies) is significant to some, the artist’s choices aren’t really that strange or perplexing. The quandaries of thematic connectivity and genre are met by the artist’s stated desire to do away with the idea of subject matter altogether, hence the duplications. Yet Lamsfuss must enjoy the collision of imagery as much as the recasting of his selected subjects as oil on canvas. His lush, heavy realism makes for compelling translations and the smaller, squiggly brush strokes successfully draw the viewer’s attention to the painting of these paintings.