Hayward Gallery, London
18 October 2011 – 8 January 2012
Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX
+44 844 847 9910


This exhibition is the first major retrospective in the UK of the American artist George Condo. Condo emerged in New York’s influential East Village art scene in the early 80s with his ‘fake Old Master’ canvases. He has since created one of the most adventurous, imaginative, and provocative bodies of work in contemporary art. George Condo: Mental States is the first major survey of paintings and sculptures from the past three decades of the artist’s career. The Hayward Gallery presentation features some 80 works, and includes nine of Condo’s portraits of Her Majesty The Queen.

Condo’s approach to making art unsettlingly conjoins the beautiful and the grotesque, seriousness and outlandish wit. His portraits, which for all their oddness and outrageous humour and their caricatured features, are deeply immersed in the traditions of European and American painting. Focusing on his ‘imaginary portraits’, which conjure varied mental states with a mixture of absurdity and pathos, the exhibition also features portraits of historical subjects such as Jesus and the Madonna, exploring the breadth of Condo’s artistic vision.