Luis Pablo: Memphis Cat

This is a classic Luis Pablo cat in form: the long, deep curve of the neck folding the head down toward the body, the heavy black tail swung out behind with its signature upward curl at the tip. It's a posture Luis Pablo returns to often, one that gives the cat both grace and a slightly mischievous self-possession. The painting is where this piece does something different. Hot pink, electric blue, yellow, black, and white in bold flat blocks, broken up by a dashed-stitch pattern that runs along the spine, the flanks, the face. The vocabulary is pure Memphis Milano, the Italian postmodern design movement founded by Ettore Sottsass in 1980, whose signature was exactly this combination of electric pastels, primary colors, and graphic dot-and-dash patterning. The movement got its name from a Bob Dylan song. "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" played on repeat at the founding meeting in Sottsass's Milan apartment, and the needle is said to have stuck on the line "Memphis blues again," with no one sober enough to fix it. The face carries the full composition: yellow eyes ringed in black, a red nose, white whiskers painted in tiny dashes, a hot pink ear flashing against the black crown. Every color sings the way Memphis intended, joyfully, against every rule of restraint. Luis Pablo signs his work with a hand-painted candle on the underside, his standing emblem for the light a piece brings into a home. Origin: Oaxaca Dimensions: 10''Tall 8''Long 4''Wide