The FLAG Art Foundation (New York, New York) presents an exhibition of works on paper by Graham Little, marking the British artist’s debut institutional solo presentation in the United States. Created between 2000 and 2023, these sixteen gouache and colored pencil works are meticulous portals into Little’s complex and mysterious universe.
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Graham Little begins each composition by scouring artist monographs and stacks of weathered spreads in fashion magazines from the 1970s and 1980s. With a reverence for reference, his scenes infuse late-twentieth-century advertising aesthetics with lush art-historical motifs, such as in “Untitled (Bedroom),” 2021, in which decorative flourishes—reminiscent of the late British designer Terence Conran—furnish a mantle beneath a couple depicted in the stiffened style of Etruscan funerary art. Little’s palette radiates warmth, and yet, his exacting handiwork and needlelike ornamentations are also coolly imperceptible, pristine, and smooth. In Little’s world, not a hair is out of place; each refined figure is a custodian of the quietly immaculate interiors and exteriors they inhabit.
Layering the aesthetics and ideals of Western advertising culture and art history, Little’s out-of-time characters are positioned with an air of remove. Born out of commercial photography, the men and women inhabiting these uncanny scenes are meant to be looked at and are conscious of it—participants in their own objectification.
The intimate scale of Little’s work further reinforces its conceptual foundations; as if peering through the window of a miniature model, viewers are encouraged to physically lean in and absorb the nuance of each detail. Despite their physicality, the ambiguous contexts of his subjects inspire endless curiosity: What is the man in the wine-colored robe and slippers reading while he sips his morning coffee? Who is the woman in an elaborate white and red-hearted apron—which matches her tablecloth and starched napkins—entertaining for tea? How did the mangy fox die? Little’s compositions are keepers of their secrets, flexible to viewers’ infinite imaginations.
A commissioned text by Hettie Judah, chief art critic at the British daily paper The i, accompanies Little’s exhibition. This exhibition is on view through May 4, 2024.
Details: www.flagartfoundation.org
