Elizabeth Peyton: Angel

David Zwirner presents a solo exhibition of new paintings and works on paper by Elizabeth Peyton (b. 1965) at the gallery’s London location. The exhibition, titled Angel, is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue that will be published by David Zwirner Books in collaboration with the artist.

This is the first presentation of Peyton’s work in London since Aire and Angels, her 2019 exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, which placed the artist’s paintings alongside historical works of portraiture drawn from the museum’s permanent collection.

Image: Elizabeth Peyton, Thus Love (Echo), 2023 (detail)

Location

24 Grafton Street London

Dates

June 7—July 28, 2023

Gallery Hours

Mon—Fri 10am–6pm

Artist

Elizabeth Peyton

Press Release

Angel

“Her desire is one for perfection: she makes her paintings into perfect images of life, which are so beautiful and draw you in. But within that desire you can feel the longing: the longing for a life that is gone, or that is going to be gone. You can feel the desire to know—truly know—those individuals.”

—Donatien Grau, advisor for contemporary programs, the Louvre Museum, Paris

Elizabeth Peyton

Thus Love (Echo), 2023

Oil on linen board

14 1/8 x 11 inches (35.9 x 27.9 cm)

Elizabeth Peyton

Ang in the Mountains, 2023

Color pencil and oil pastel on paper

12 x 9 inches (30.5 x 22.9 cm)
Framed: 19 3/8 x 16 inches (49.2 x 40.7 cm)

Elizabeth Peyton, Ang in the Mountains, 2023 (detail)

Elizabeth Peyton

Liberation Warrior (Lara), 2023

Oil on board

15 1/8 x 12 1/8 inches (38.5 x 30.7 cm)

Elizabeth Peyton, Liberation Warrior (Lara), 2023 (detail)

Elizabeth Peyton

Mani Rimdu, 2023

Oil pastel and colored pencil on paper

12 x 9 inches (30.5 x 22.9 cm)
Framed: 19 3/8 x 16 inches (49.2 x 40.7 cm)

Elizabeth Peyton

Light (Lucas & Flowers), 2023

Oil on board

17 1/8 x 14 inches (43.5 x 35.5 cm)

Elizabeth Peyton

Mai (Afterlife) after Sir Joshua Reynolds' Portrait of Mai (Omai), 1776, 2023

Colored pencil and pastel on paper

12 x 9 inches (30.5 x 22.9 cm)
Framed: 19 3/8 x 16 inches (49.1 x 40.6 cm)

Elizabeth Peyton, Mai (Afterlife) after Sir Joshua Reynolds' Portrait of Mai (Omai), 1776, 2023 (detail)

Elizabeth Peyton

Elvis Angel (Elvis' Eyes), 2023

Oil on linen board

9 x 12 inches (22.9 x 30.5 cm)

Elizabeth Peyton

TC (Timothée), 2022-2023

Colored pencil and pastel on paper

12 1/4 x 9 1/8 inches (31 x 23.2 cm)
Framed: 19 3/8 x 16 inches (49.1 x 40.6 cm)

Elizabeth Peyton, TC (Timothée), 2023 (detail)

Elizabeth Peyton

Ang (Ang Tshering Lama), 2023

Oil on board

12 x 9 inches (30.5 x 22.9 cm)

Elizabeth Peyton

Kiss (Elvis), 2023

Pastel, color pastel, watercolor, and colored pencil on paper

14 1/8 x 10 1/4 inches (35.9 x 26 cm)
Framed: 21 3/8 x 17 1/8 inches (54.4 x 43.6 cm)

Elizabeth Peyton, Kiss (Elvis), 2023 (detail)

Elizabeth Peyton

Titanic (Leonardo), 2023

Oil on board

9 x 12 inches (22.9 x 30.5 cm)

Elizabeth Peyton

Angel (Mary Magdalene), 2023

Etching with aquatint on Magnani Pescia paper

20 1/8 x 14 7/8 inches (51.1 x 37.8 cm)
Framed: 23 3/8 x 18 1/8 inches (59.4 x 46 cm)
Edition of 25, 8 AP

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Elizabeth Peyton, Angel (Mary Magdalene), 2023 (detail)

Elizabeth Peyton

Love (Luca), 2023

Oil on board

20 1/8 x 16 1/8 inches (51 x 41 cm)

Elizabeth Peyton, Love (Luca), 2023 (detail)

Elvis’s Eyes. Angel. Elvis. Echo from Thus Love. Luca, maker of I am Love. Leonardo-Jack and Rose-Titanic. Mai. Mary Magdalene. Ang Tsherin Lama. Lara, Flowers. These are all traces of a “visionary company of love,” as the poet Hart Crane put it in his powerful poem about cathedrals from 1932, “The Broken Tower.” To discover this visionary company in an exhibition whose title can be traced back to the ancient Greek term angelos, meaning messenger, protector, someone who comes to guide us on our way.

Peyton’s subjects all become angels in her work, where light and emotion are rendered with the intensity of her distinctive humanism: a close-looking akin to love. In each subject’s specificity, the artist transmits the universal feelings that connect us to each other and to art, that stretch from our present moment back through time. In their togetherness, they constitute a painted world transmitting that ecstatic life force we feel in cathedrals and on mountain tops and which is present in each of us.

In Mai (Afterlife) after Sir Joshua Reynolds' Portrait of Mai (Omai), 1776, Peyton depicts the titular subject of Joshua Reynolds’s eighteenth-century portrait. In the present rendition, Peyton focuses entirely on Mai’s face.

The original painting by Reynolds portrays Mai (also known as Omai)—a Pacific Islander from Raiatea who traveled to England in 1773 and became a prominent figure among aristocratic society—at full length and barefoot, dressed in flowing, orientalized robes.

Installation view, Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of Mai (Omai), c. 1776. National Portrait Gallery, London

In Angel (Mary Magdalene) the artist depicts the biblical disciple of Christ. Peyton’s portrayal of Mary Magdalene is modeled after an 1876 stained-glass window in the Church of Saint-Séverin, a Gothic church in Paris.

Throughout her career, Peyton has been fascinated by artists and cultural luminaries from historical and contemporary eras alike, and her art making is driven by an openness and curiosity that seeks to approach and understand her subjects and their creative practices. As Peyton describes her process: “I am listening to that person’s music, or I am seeing that person’s art, or just thinking about somebody a lot, or want to know more.… Like with a piece of music, I will just keep following it, listening to it. And then I want to make a picture of that person.”

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Installation view of the exhibition, Elizabeth Peyton: Angel, at David Zwirner in London, dated 2023.

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