Idle Hands, 2021
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 90 x 84 in. (228.6 x 213.36 cm)
- Accession Number
- 2021.37
- Copyright
Image courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, Corvi-Mora, London, Photo Credit: Jason Wyche.
- Credit
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Purchase with funds provided by the Acquisition and Collection Committee
Idle Hands, 2021, features a central figure with legs splayed, knees apart,
and one arm resting across his foreshortened torso. He appears to look out at the viewer from deep inside the work’s perspective, his shoulders and upper body propped up against the vague figure of a dog. Though the setting of the scene is hard to guess, the image conveys a moment of relaxation, intimacy and quietness, perhaps of friendship between species, or--as one of the man’s hands holds onto the dog’s leg--of subtle guardedness. Romantic and lyrical, Packer’s lines move quickly and define space alternately as intensity and disappearance. Areas of focus, such as the man’s over-articulated feet, jostle against phantom limbs, traces of paint, and clouded red depths. In certain places, the primary figures seem to blur, recombine, or shift in exposure, which also evokes a sense of time passing.