John Lurie
Born in Minnesota in 1952, Lurie is well know for his work in film and music but he has also worked as a visual artist. His colour full ink drawings, water colours and gouaches may be best described as hilarious musings on the absurd beauty of daily life.
Lurie's works express a disarming mixture of corrosive wit, raw emotion and unblemished sensitivity. Human beings and animals like rabbits, dogs, elephants, horses and pigs are depicted in a naïve, almost primitive style, however not as the personified creatures of children's books, but rather as rough beasts, often with sexual references. The works of Lurie bear the mark of an outsider, a quality present throughout his idiosyncratic career. His intentionally juvenile posturing is combined with a serious approach towards technique and use of materials. His saturated colours and energetic textures reveal a thorough understanding of paint, colours and the way the audience can be drawn into a painting.
In 2006 Lurie had his first solo museum show at P.S.1. Contemporary Arts Center, New York. In the same year he exhibited in the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. This year his work was shown in the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, Montreal, Canada and in 2008 will be in the prestigious Mudam in Luxembourg. He also released a book of black and white drawings, Learn To Draw, published by Walther Konig. The Museum of Modern Art has acquired his work for their permanent collection.
An artist, musician, composer and actor, John Lurie has been a crucial member of the New York cultural scene for more than thirty years. He starred in a number of feature films by Jim Jarmusch, such as Stranger than Paradise (1984) and Down by Law (1986). This led to appearances in numerous films with some of the world's foremost directors: Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas, Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ and David Lynch's Wild at Heart. He has scored the music for over 20 films and received a Grammy nomination for Best Instrumental Composition Written for a Motion Picture for Get Shorty (1995).
In 1978, he formed the acclaimed jazz-punk band The Lounge Lizards which Lester Bangs of The New York Times proclaimed as "staking out new territory that lies somewhere west of Charles Mingus and east of Bernard Hermann." His 1991 comedy series Fishing with John is now a cult classic. Episodes included guests such as Tom Waits, Willem Dafoe, Matt Dillon, Jim Jarmusch and Dennis Hopper. In 2000, he released a blues album under the pseudonym Marvin Pontiac for his own label, "Strange and Beautiful Music".