Information — Pierre Condo

Pierre Condo is an artist based in Baltimore and Ellicott City, USA

Contact for questions and purchases inquiries:

peter@peteribenana.com

Instagram: @pierre.condo

All work © Peter Ibenana 2023

The Condo Series

consists of over 300 still life paintings, primarily of flowers.

Compositionally, they use a heavy application of pure oil paint, thickly applied.

Artist Statement

My work is chiefly concerned with time and animation. I discovered painting later in my life with the urge to capture moments and motion on canvas.

Rejecting the modern paradigm of painting as object and concept and refuting the representational tradition of painting as narrative, my artistic practice deconstructs painting and, seizing and jettisoning the way of seeing that espouses Western canonical painting, forces a way of seeing painting as a moment within a series of moments – a frame within an animation, a study in Time. My work does not exist in isolation, however. It considers Jacob Lawrence and On Kawara, and their contributions to 20th-century history and serial painting. Yet, my work seeks to go beyond those former structures and is altering the landscape of how we understand time and animation at a very foundational level - and how we can reengage with this medium in a new way.

Bio

From as early as I can remember, I was always making marks. Drawing was the one thing I could do ALL day long. I was born in Baltimore, MD as 1 of 3 children to Nigerian parents. I studied animation and art history in college and, later, taught art between the years 2005 and 2014, starting and ending in Baltimore. I am, currently, a museum professional.

My works investigate time, motion, movement, and animation through the medium of painting. Discovering painting later in my life, I’m interested in pushing the boundaries of painting in a new way by using the methods and tools of animation to examine, broadly, our interaction with time.

What is art?

I am interested in how art “works” within an experienced reality. As I work out these ideas, I recall, occasionally, my former inner city teaching days. There I learned to ask, “what is art for a 6 year old? What makes sense to a 4th grader? What is important about art making to a preschooler?” Who does our work affect, and how? More importantly, how can we apply these questions to our own artistic practice?