Adam Cohen is pleased to present Pablo Barba’s first New York solo exhibition:

LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE

Live, Laugh, Love

Live, Laugh, Love is an exhibition of paintings by New York-based artist Pablo Barba. Drawing from stock imagery, social media, and Internet meme culture, Barba contextualizes contemporary scenes in the tradition of petit genre painting. Utilizing themes such as the “merry company” as a point of departure, his paintings depict small groups of characters in familiar situations drawn from everyday life.

In this series of ten new paintings begun in 2021, Barba creates a variety of scenes wherein ordinary women engage in activities around the table. From a large, festive crowd to a lone oyster eater, the characters are depicted living their best lives as they enact viral behaviors and nostalgic attempts to recreate the recent past. The exhibition finds itself in a present marked by the spirit of keeping calm and carrying on - and while nobody knows what the future may hold, we know there will be brunch.

About the artist

Born in 1985 in Santiago de Chile, Pablo Barba grew up in the Chile of the nineties, a time and place shaped by rapid change. As the country abruptly transitioned from a long-lasting dictatorship which had plunged its citizens into international and social isolation, the return to democracy was accompanied by the promises of consumer culture and the arrival of the World Wide Web. Barba came of age as an artist in a society that was eager to participate and connect on a global scale – and the Web became a portal through which to experience the rest of the world. In a country that had once been defined by limited access to information, he found himself mining the annals of art history and the Internet simultaneously. In his paintings, Barba combines tropes of classical figurative painting with gestures and themes drawn from contemporary digital culture.

Pablo Montealegre Barba earned an MFA from Columbia University (2016), an MA from Universidad de Chile (2014), and a BFA from Universidad Catolica de Chile (2009). His work has been exhibited at Galería Animal, Galería BECH and Galería Juan Egenau in Santiago; at The LeRoy Neiman Gallery, The Wallach Gallery at Columbia University, The Fisher-Landau Center for Art, and The Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York; and at Steve Turner Gallery in Los Angeles. He lives and works in New York.