Mernet Larsen is the first monograph published on the American painter who has recently been rediscovered by the art world as a significant voice in the "extensive, possibly global conversation about how to portray modern, three-dimensional life on two dimensional surfaces" (Roberta Smith, New York Times). Larsen's paintings do not resemble anyone else's. They are a complete world and, in that regard, belong to the tradition that includes Giorgio de Chirico and Rene Magritte. Larsen's paintings are abstracted figurations with Japanese-inspired perspective. Tracing paper cut-outs are used all across the canvas, giving her works a constructed appeal. She pursues radical spatial solutions; eschewing conventional single-point perspective in favour of parallel perspective, reverse perspective and eccentric, seemingly improvised but rigorously seen-through fusions of different systems within the same work. By destabilising the location of the viewer, sometimes indeed to the point of inducing vertigo, she forces us to know, rather than merely see, the situation. Her representational practice grew out of abstraction and is pervaded by awareness of Japanese narrative scrolls. Larsen's subjects include classrooms, coffee shops, vacation spots, and malls -- gathering places. She has also explored people sitting in a car, being fitted, exercising in a gym, adoring a child, riding an escalator, shaking hands, and shooting at an unseen target. The monograph gives a full analysis of Larsen's work of the past thirty years with a focus on her oeuvre since 2000. John Yau presents an in-depth essay that analyses individual works as much as he puts Larsen's work in place with regards to her contemporaries.
