Julie Curtiss does this thing with painting in which she speaks of the contemporary political climate without a hint of an obvious visual to grasp onto for context. She is sneaky in that way, and one of the best painters of the last decade to emerge in the wake of a resurgence of Chicago Imagist admiration but through her own satirical vision. Her cover story with us in Fall 2021, which I have mentioned numerous times, was where my admiration for her ability to be both political and social in one image really came to fruition. I like to think she has a vantage point over the procedings of life in a way few other painters have. "I’m interested in systems building themselves and falling apart, in the cycle of chaos and order, and in the moment when something is pushed to its breaking point," Curtiss says of her new show, Suburban Lawns, on view now at Gagosian in Paris, and perhaps this is the most explicit I have heard her on the subject. We live in times where destruction of norms is now the norm, where chaos is being presented as some manicured future of ones liking, systems collapsing on purpose to make way for some omnipresent utopia of a future.
Being a new parent and the surreal moment in which we see ourselves in 2025 seems to be at the center of the work, and something well kempt but slightly not of this world has been at the center of Curtiss' output since we first started writing about her. Her works suggest we can't run away from the Lynchian universe we all share. There is ambiguity yes, but a sense that we can escape to the suburbs for an easier more stable life is nothing but a farce, and Curtiss is well aware. —Evan Pricco
