David Humphrey

"Artist David Humphrey (b. 1955) has been exhibiting internationally since the 1980s when he burst upon the New York art scene. His dynamic paintings defy easy categorization, seamlessly blending representational and abstract passages from a range of sources to create hybrid images that borrow from a wide variety of visual languages and idioms. His work may at any given time integrate gestural abstraction and a cartoonish figuration, with aspects of expressionism, pop art and surrealism to create complex narratives that often touch on the dynamics of human relationships, gender, the environment, and race, but resist any one interpretation. David Humphrey is the first comprehensive, career-spanning monograph surveying the artist's forty-year career. Edited by Davy Lauterbach in close collaboration with the artist, the book includes over 200 generously scaled, full color reproductions of Humphrey's painting and sculptural work from the early 1980s to today. In addition the plates are complimented by a selection of archival and detail photographs, which provide further context for the reader. The book includes three essays by Lauterbach, Wayne Koestenbaum and Lytle Shaw, and a lively and far reaching conversation between Humphrey and an artistic collaborator, the painter Jennifer Coates"--