In her work, Larsen employs various spatial systems that often contradict: combining reverse, isometric, and conventional perspectives, she casts everyday scenarios into a vertigo-inducing version of reality akin to our...
In her work, Larsen employs various spatial systems that often contradict: combining reverse, isometric, and conventional perspectives, she casts everyday scenarios into a vertigo-inducing version of reality akin to our own. Drawing from influences that range from the non-objective geometries of Russian Constructivism to Bunraku puppet theater and Indian miniatures, her works take compositional cues from art of the past as springboards for uniquely spatial figure-paintings that speak to the anxieties of the present. In Solar System, Explained (2020), curator Susan Thompson describes, “Larsen’s recurring ‘people around a table’ motif combines with reverse perspective to dynamic effect [...] The concentric discs of a tufted restaurant booth orbit a table-top model solar system, the gridded cushions echoing the checkered pattern of the inverted floor. (Or is that the ceiling?, a viewer may wonder. No, it must be the floor.) Anchored by atypically hot pops of color, the work’s energy swirls hypnotically around the painting’s center. But just as forcefully, Larsen pulls focus to each of the four corners, where we find a lone spider; a bowed, brooding head teetering near off its body; and two glasses of red wine proffered by the overstretched arms of a bow-tied waiter and flipped upward in defiance of gravity.”