Comic Future

Featuring work by 15 contemporary artists who freely mix cubism, figurative painting, and gestural abstraction with the visual strategies of cartoons and comics, Comic Future presents conceptually adventurous and visually bold interpretations of our frequently absurd world. Appropriating subjects from mythology, advertising, print culture, and children’s television, these artists employ discordant approaches that twist representations of their immediate environment into skewed, often apocalyptic visions of the future.

The exhibition showcases works from the 1960s through 2013 through a wide range of artists and media—including career-spanning works on paper by Sigmar Polke, a comic-book collage by Walead Beshty, sculpture by Aaron Curry and Liz Craft, and a video by the always-provocative Paul McCarthy. The late Mike Kelley is represented by works from two series that bookend his influential career: an early grouping of doodle-like drawings and a selection of recent illuminated sculptures based on Superman’s home city of Kandor. Also on display are paintings by Arturo Herrera, Carroll Dunham, Lari Pittman, Dana Schutz, and Sue Williams that explore the uneasy boundary between abstraction and figuration.