In the middle of 2021, Robert Pokorny told Juxtapoz in a moment of reflection, "I found myself, as many of us did the past year in deep self – reflection. Everything we knew changed from the way we interacted, worked, learned, connected and escaped. It was as if we were all collectively thinking and staring." Thinking and staring and smoking, in the case of the artist. What the Los Angeles artist is doing with his new solo show, Inside Out, opening at Steve Turner on April 29th, is that his reflection seems to be looking at himself and the people and animals around him, as aging in time. There's a wonderful song and lyric by the band Spoon that shares the name of Pokorny's show and reads "Time's got inside out / Time gets to start again," and that seems to be the frequency for which Robert exists on right now.
According to the artist, “These portraits are not meant to depict one person in particular but rather are pictures of us all. They allow me to engage with great painters of the past, to tap into my own emotions, and to relate them to the outer world. They might seem absurd or humorous, but they are always sincere.” In a tradition that we have seen with R. Crumb, they are comical, autobiographical, and about how aging relates to us all. —Evan Pricco
