Jupiter Contemporary is pleased to present Public Displays of Affectation, a solo exhibition of new work by Brooklyn-based artist Lizzy Lunday, whose brightly hued canvases draw upon imagery from reality TV, social media, the artist’s iPhone photos, and occasionally art history to mine the tensions and contrived expressions that result from the performance of intimacy as spectacle.
Featuring eight never-before-seen paintings, all of which take the popular British TV show Love Island as subject, the exhibition showcases Lunday’s penchant for celebrity, drama, and romance—whether genuine or affected—through a style as loud and exaggerated in its choices of color and composition as the surreal conditions of the show itself. Each painting begins as a digital collage, wherein Lunday layers and manipulates scenes from the show to arrive at a fractured, composite image that somehow feels as true to (or far from) life as the individuals and interactions it portrays. Bronzed, scantily clad bodies accented by extreme highlights along their arms, legs, and abs take center stage, fawning over one another—or observing their peers with mild apathy—in a variety of intimate encounters that, while suggestive of love, desire, and affection, betray a certain disassociation from their own actions and from one another.
Lizzy Lunday (b.1992, Kansas City, Kansas) received her MFA from Pratt Institute and her BFA from the University of Miami. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally at Fredericks & Freiser, New York; GNYP Gallery, Berlin; Kutlesa Gallery, Goldau, Switzerland; and Steven Zevitas Gallery, Boston. She was the recipient of Pratt’s GSEF grant in 2019. More recently, Lunday was named on Saatchi Art’s 2019 Rising Stars Report and was an artist-inresidence at 77Art in Rutland, Vermont. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn.