Joyce Pensato in conversation with Sir Norman Rosenthal by Laura Bushell

To mark her first exhibition at Lisson gallery, artist Joyce Pensato joins curator and art historian Sir Norman Rosenthal and Ossian Ward for a conversation to discuss her show Joyceland. Pensato’s exuberant likenesses of cartoon characters and comic-book heroes, whether her subject is the darkened visage of Homer Simpson crossed with Groucho Marx or Marge from Hell, Batman or Donald Duck, her imagery are more than just a cartoon, they are sinister, humorous, visual stimulating, and bold to say the least. This also stems from her seemingly frenzied painting technique – actually involving the deliberate accretion of successive layers of bold linear gestures, rapid repainting and frequent erasures.

For the show New York-based Pensato will also transport the majority of her Brooklyn studio (which she refers to as ‘Joyceland’) to London, bringing her stuffed animals, talking toys, plastic action figures and collaged ephemera of postcards, found adverts and posters that she refers to and draws inspiration from for her paintings. Her working environment, documented for the first time in a number of new photographs by the artist, will be recreated as installations in the gallery, down to the paint pots, brushes, books and discarded scraps of newspaper that are similarly covered in the spatters, splashes and drips that result from her obsessive painterly method.

Recorded on Saturday 5 April 2014 as part of the First Weekend talks.

Joyceland is on view until May 10th 2014 at Lisson Gallery, London

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