For last drop Magdalena Los has produced a new series of paintings that continues her ongoing inquiry into the relation between art and labor. The works situate the place of art in a world of transactions, and respond to their own situation with mixed emotions. You are looking at the different moods of a lemon, and they are de-pressing indeed.
The “untitles” that Los chose for these works—reaching from Tugend (virtue) to Unsterblichkeit (immortality)—allude to the fact that lemons throughout history have always held many promises. These “golden apples”—fruits of love, fertility and eternal life—were once given to Zeus and Hera as a wedding gift, to be guarded by the evening nymphs, Hesperides.
In worldlier contexts, too, the lemon became an object of luxury, particularly in areas where it was difficult to grow: it appears in roughly half of Dutch still-life paintings, with artists not only showcasing their technical proficiency with curls of peel, but also offering reminders of vanitas through drought and decay. Paintings that encode the “spirit of capitalism”: to squeeze every drop out of life, it seems, is to practice frugality in the face of abundance—to secure the surplus lest it goes to waste. (Franca Zitta & Mari van Stokkum)