A profoundly rich optical puzzle intersected by overlapping forms and expressive charcoal lines, Untitled embodies the irrefutable beauty, conceptual gravitas, and unparalleled technical finesse which characterise the very best of George Condo’s celebrated oeuvre. Executed in 2016, the present work presents a mesmerising landscape of architectural figuration and compelling materiality which stands at the apex of the artist’s continued series of Drawing Paintings. Deftly combining the processes of painting and drawing into a single, gestural plane, these captivating works blur the boundary between figurative and non-representational painting with graceful ease. Exhibiting a rich textural surface and a sensual, pearlescent luminosity, Untitled revels in the unforeseen beauty and alluring, hedonistic entropy of Condo’s improvisational genius. Fusing the tactile with the visual, the present work’s lush impasto and bold, expressive lines presents an enigmatic and fractured tableau of delicate chaos. Drawing and painting a dizzying assemblage of forms and figures that collide and fragment, the viewer catches glimpses of recognisable human features; an arm, teeth, curvaceous hips and breasts, and ogling eyes which emerge only to be subsumed again beneath the mass of quivering bodies. A captivating large-scale composition, Untitled embodies Condo’s knife-edge dance between the enticing and the grotesque, sanctifying his place as one of the leading painters of his generation.

Charged with emotional intensity and psychological depth, Transparent Figures features a crowd of faint yet striking figures interwoven together in a kaleidoscopic composition. Within a Cubist topography, sensuous lines and lush passages of flat colour overlap into a densely layered web of unrestrained abstraction, infused with a sense of rhythm and polyphony that stems from Condo’s spontaneous, gestural improvisations. Throughout the work, bodies are fragmented into disjointed planes of colour along the same innovative vein as Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 and Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. For Condo, it is the imaginary potential of portraits that defines the genre for him; as such, the artist tends to paint from his own mental snapshot or emotional reaction, rather than from life. The artist’s frenzied brushwork is anchored by sharp, fragmented lines evoking an enormous range of human emotions that collide into a riot of forms that bridge the gap between an emotional state and an imagined physical reality.

Pushing the boundaries of his ever-evolving exploration of the human form and his unique ability to push the sculptural, three-dimensional form within the confines of a two dimensional canvas, Condo ruptures the composition of the present work to reveal the multifaceted complexities of human emotion. In this self-titled mode of ‘psychological cubism’, Condo tries “to depict a character’s train of thoughts simultaneously – hysteria, joy, sadness, desperation. If you could see these things at once that would be like what I’m trying to make you see in my art.” (George Condo, quoted in Stuart Jeffries, “George Condo: ‘I Was Delirious. Nearly Died’, The Guardian, 10 February 2014, online). Condo has established himself in the canon of Western art history as a master puppeteer of the human psyche, presenting to his audience forms that delight and repulse, amuse and sadden, welcome and alienate. Untitled captures the best of Condo’s unravelling and subsequent reassembly of various pictorial languages, which has cemented him as one of today’s most clever and cutting-edge contemporary painters.

喬 治·康多的作品以無可置疑的美學、深刻的概念和出眾的技巧而聞名，而本作亦不例外。創於 2016 年的《無題》由交錯重疊的形象和極富表現力的炭筆線條交織而成，糅合建築具象和物料特性，呈現出一幅豐富迷人的視覺拼圖，屬「素描繪畫」系列的巔峰之作。這系列的作品巧妙將繪畫和素描的過程結合在單一動勢的平面之上，以輕鬆優雅的手法模糊具象和非具象繪畫之間的界線。《無題》紋理豐富，配搭珠光光澤，可見康多在即興創作下，演繹出未曾預計的美學和縱情享樂的無序之感。本作將觸覺與視覺融為一體，濃厚的顏料加上大膽而富有表現力的線條，營造出一種神秘而破碎的微妙混亂畫面。各種形象和人物在素描和繪畫的表達下碰撞粉碎，不過觀者仍能從中依稀辨認出一些人類特徵：手臂、牙齒、豐乳肥臀，以及浮現後又淹沒於顫抖身體中的含情眼眸。《無題》尺幅宏大、引人入勝，尤如一場吉凶未卜的舞蹈，扣人心弦、卻又奇異荒誕，突顯出這位藝術家在當代藝壇的重要地位。

《無題》洋溢豐沛情感和深度心理，構圖上的人物隱約可見，卻又引人注目；他們交織纏繞，令人目不暇給。在立體派的景觀上，康多隨心即興的揮筆衍生出富有節奏的複調音樂感，充滿美感的線條和豐富的色彩層層重疊，化成密集無限的抽象網絡。作品中的身體分割成不連貫的色彩平面，如此創新的風格與馬塞爾·杜尚（Marcel Duchamp）的《下樓的裸女二號》和巴布羅·畢卡索（Pablo Picasso）的《亞維農的少女》一脈相乘。康多認為肖像蘊藏想像潛力，更傾向於繪畫自己的心理狀態或情感反應，而不以現實生活入畫。他張狂的筆觸和清晰分裂的線條表達出人類的眾多情感，再而迸發出各種形象，將情感狀態和想像現實相結合，顛覆固有的肖像傳統。

康多不斷探索人類形態的界限，在平面畫布上以獨樹一幟的風格呈現雕塑的立體形態，突破本作的構圖，揭示人類方方面面的複雜情感。在這種他稱為「心理立體主義」的模式中，康多試圖「同時描繪角色的思路 —— 歇斯底里、喜悅、悲傷、絕望。如若你能同時看到這些情感，我的藝術就達到目的了。」（喬治·康多，引自史都華·傑弗里斯，〈喬治·康多：「我曾神志若狂，瀕臨死亡」〉，《衛報》，2014 年 2 月 10 日，網上）。康多向觀者呈現出一個個不同形象：既有有趣、令人愉悅和樂意親近的，亦有悲傷、令人反感和避之則吉的，在西方藝術史上確立了自己作為人類心理大師的地位。《無題》包羅康多解析和重新組合各種繪畫語言的精華凝練，乃是充份體現出他獨到風格的完美典範之作。