According to Veronica Roberts, “One of the most compelling aspects of Larsen’s practice is the nuanced way she repeatedly summons the past to capture present-day concerns.” In this work, Larsen...
According to Veronica Roberts, “One of the most compelling aspects of Larsen’s practice is the nuanced way she repeatedly summons the past to capture present-day concerns.” In this work, Larsen referred to an abstract composition by El Lissitzky from 1923, to construct a timely figural narrative within a spatial structure that violates conventional representation. Larsen explains, “In 'Gurney,' I ‘saw’ (in an El Lissitzky painting) a woman sitting on a gurney beside an outstretched man, whose feet protruded from a sheet. The floor and gurney were tilted, balanced on the horizon of the floor, as if the situation was psychologically very precarious, or as if the viewer was askew. The colors were hospital cold, and the woman, wearing a blue hospital gown and pink slippers, was large, looming, tense. [...] I could “see” the hospital gown had some sort of print, but it took a long time for that to come into focus for me as rabbits (symbolic of life or liveliness?). The woman seemed to be holding a cell phone, a quotidian detail.”