The Heart of Wetness

This evening, we sipped Curacao-tinted Prosecco at the chapel of the surf—a magnificent, torrential, calligraphic Raymond Pettibon show at Venus over Manhattan on Madison Avenue.  Spanning 25 years (1987-2012), the show aggregates 40 of Pettibon’s surfer-thermed paintings ranging from intimate black ink wash images to colossal indigo-slashed pieces often accompanied by handwritten poetic Lichtensteinian texts, that put one at the core of the wave, feeling at once powerful, vulnerable and alone.