Anna Weyant: The Guitar Man

Gagosian in rue de Castiglione in Paris presents a solo show dedicated to the works of Anna Weyant. The hapless subjects of Anna Weyant’s indelible paintings and drawings are recurrently tested by everyday circumstances, weathering what the artist has described as “low-stakes trauma.” In these precisely rendered scenes, figures—most often young and female—find themselves embroiled in tragicomic narratives with an ironic twinge, offering a dreamlike insight into the capacity of popular culture and social convention to manufacture and distort gestures, rituals, and signifiers of femininity. But far from presenting her protagonists as merely symbolic, Weyant remains sensitive to their human idiosyncrasies and contradictions, picturing characters who are endearing, mysterious, and wholly themselves. In her crystalline still-life compositions, meanwhile, everyday objects adopt an uncanny, portentous air.