Cary Leibowitz

New Discretions is proud to present, You Really Let Yourself Go, a solo exhibition by Cary Leibowitz. The exhibition runs in conjunction with a sister presentation, You Haven't Changed at All, at Tibor de Nagy, New York

The following poem, written by Leibowitz, serves as an playful introduction to the exhibition:

"Conceit

repeat

Connect the dots

Bon mots

Man Ray objects

Magritte Visual puns

Arp wood paintings Amateur signage

Fluxus

dada

Dad jokes

Sad jokes

Mad jokes

Do overs

Re-do

Regret

Cry baby

Words that rhyme with fart"

Leibowitz’s words provide a foundation from which one may explore the artist’s new text paintings included in You Really Let Yourself Go. The title diptych of the exhibition features a pink puffy cloud being ridiculed for its lumpy form; in another artwork, a tondo declares, No More Self-Esteem; And in another, a large circle presents as 11th Place Every Single Fucking Thing Award. Congratulations, you won.

For decades, Leibowitz has been the New York art world’s master painter of abjection and neurosis, self-loathing, self-doubt, and self-interrogation—“like a human dynamo of insecurity,” Rhonda Lieberman wrote in Artforum in 1992. His uproarious text paintings of self-lacerating one-liners, typically composed against glossy, pastel-colored wood “canvases,” are self-conscious counterpoints to neo-expressionist grandiosity and the new pop spectacle of the 1990s art world—incorporating elements of therapy, interrogation, social and institutional critique, and stand-up comedy. Leibowitz’s work, however, is also (and always) deeply personal and idiosyncratic, driven by anxieties, neuroses, and premonitions of difference. Work that explores the nagging of crippling conscience that perpetually lies beneath, behind, or just around the corner—with a mocking and knowing wink.

Leibowitz’s love for sham foodstuffs is also a marker of this new body of work. An apple red misshape is dotted with rubber crackers, shyly stating, Don’t Ask. In another work, a baby blue starburst adorned with mock muffins, declares, I Need A Typewriter. “I think of the fake food as real fake food the same way this is not a pipe is a pipe,” Leibowitz explains. As the works are paintings, he describes them as “seductive brushstrokes.”

Leibowitz has produced periodically throughout his career a distinctive form, the unique multiple. Last year even saw the publishing of “Official Candyass Muggery Drinking Vessels 1990 – 2023 Catalogue Raisonné by Cary Leibowitz” by Krakow Witkin Gallery. As with his last New York solo exhibition, I Need to Grow Up And Be Taken Seriously Said the Clown At the Urinal, at Invisible-Exports, visitors of You Really Let Yourself Go will be gifted a new story/poem in the form of a mug—a offering from the artists to all. You are welcome.

Cary Leibowitz (b. 1963) has exhibited in museums and institutions across the globe including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; The Contemporary Art Museum, Houston; The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco; The Jewish Museum, New York; the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis; PS1 MoMA, New York; to name just a few. His work has been reviewed in the New Yorker, Artforum, The New York Times, Frieze Magazine, Art in America, among others, and is included in the permanent collection of the Chase Manhattan Bank, the Hirshhorn Museum, and The Jewish Museum in New York. He currently has an installation included in the exhibition, Get in the Game at SFMoMA.