Tharp

September 09, 2011, 9:30am

The Atmosphere of Painted Spaces: Sarah Awad and Storm Tharp

Playful demystification inhabits the center of Los Angeles artist Sarah Awad’s Instruments of Culture at Seattle’s James Harris Gallery, a series of large, densely painted canvases depicting the statuary and halls of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. Layered with oil to the point that marble sculptures become ghostlike and courtyards become abstracted spaces of color blocks and sketched lines, this series of work accentuates the absurdities of the object display that represents standard practice in museums.