“One of the things I love so much about figurative painting is that it cannot exhaust the examination of our deepest human concerns. As cliché as those concerns may be, like, what is true love, painting can still unearth these timeless questions and apply them to contemporary living.” — Larry Madrigal

While Scattered Daydream, Madrigal’s first exhibition with Nicodim, focused largely on the baroque interiors of contemporary Phoenix (his young family’s hometown), many works in this exhibition have ventured outdoors, as much a commentary on how dare we now live as a flexing of the new oils on his palette. The darker shades of his inside work swing into rococo pastels in the land-and-skyscapes that hug and rainbow around the open-air action. Madrigal is looser in the negative spaces his brush might have once forced into action, belying the confidence of an older soul, someone who has been around the block a few times already. In turn, these gaps thrive in their new role as subjects. In “Now or Never Again,” 2021, a gust of wind playfully disrupts the momentousness of a wedding proposal. In “Cycles of Fulfilment,” 2021, the father diverts his gaze from his spouse and daughter, and lets a vivid sunset steal the spotlight for a moment. How Dare We Now Live is a Bildungsroman that begins after the hero has already returned home.

Larry Madrigal (b. 1986, Los Angeles) lives and works in Phoenix, Arizona. Madrigal completed his MFA at Arizona State University in Tempe in 2020. Recent exhibitions include How Dare We Now Live, Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles (2021; solo), Scattered Daydream, Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles (2020, solo); When You Waked Up the Buffalo, Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles (2020); Painting the Figure Now II, Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art, Wasau, Wisconsin (2019); New Art Arizona, Shemer Art Center and Museum, Phoenix, Arizona (2019); and Body Language: Figuration in Modern and Contemporary Art, curated by Julie Sasse, Tuscon Museum of Art, Tuscon, Arizona (2017).