Graham Little

There is no formula for beauty, no reliable unit of measure.

- Christopher Alessandrini

FLAG Art Foundation, New York, USA

But there are suggestions of some underlying logic in Graham Little’s Untitled (Sunflower Head) (2022), an austere vanitas of a decaying sunflower blossom, its seed-heavy face puckered and dry, stippled with greening rot. Beside it rests a rodent’s skull and the exposed circuitry of a spent machine, half-hidden under a clean white sheet. The image is lean as a riddle. Does it disclose some secret knowledge of the world’s inner workings, a reminder of the impossibly intricate systems that organize reality? Perhaps some rigid grammar – cold, immovable, elegant – lurks beneath the surface of things.

Little’s virtuosic talents are on display across 18 works on paper at the FLAG Art Foundation, the London-based artist’s first institutional solo exhibition in the US. He is known for his depictions of glamorous women, often absorbed in tasks or reverie, adrift in sumptuous interiors. Each of these labour-intensive images takes months to finish, and the artist’s earnest immersion is legible in their passages of rich, persuasive description and dreamlike atmospheres.