CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/25/2026

The Strand presents George Condo in conversation with Massimiliano Gioni and Dakis Joannou for the launch of 'The Mad and the Lonely'

Wednesday, March 25, at 7 PM, Strand Book Store presents a launch event with American visual artist George Condo, discussing his new art catalog, George Condo: The Mad and the Lonely. Condo will be joined in conversation by New Museum Artistic Director Massimiliano Gioni and Cypriot collector Dakis Joannou. This event will be hosted in the Strand's third-floor Rare Book Room at 828 Broadway on 12th Street.

This catalog documents Condo's exhibition The Mad and the Lonely, the site-specific installation at the DESTE Foundation's Project Space at the Slaughterhouse on the island of Hydra in Greece, which included a number of small-scale paintings and sculptures selected from the artist's long career and recontextualized in the storied space. With a vivid 40-page leporello, this square hardcover book includes a text by Dakis Joannou and an essay by Condo himself that probes the many sites and sources of inspiration for The Mad and the Lonely.

The paintings, drawings and sculptural work of George Condo offer a virtuosic examination of a wide range of art-historical idioms, which he transforms into his own visual language. He depicts grotesque, tragicomic and sometimes monstrous subjects with stylistic elements from seventeenth-century Venetian or Dutch painting, but also Cubism, Surrealism and Pop Art. Photo credit: Michael Huard.

Massimiliano Gioni is the Artistic Director of the New Museum in New York City. He has curated numerous international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale, the Berlin Biennale, Manifesta and the Gwangju Biennale among many others. His exhibitions have been presented in museums across the world including the Aishti foundation, Beirut, Athens, Qatar Museums, Doha, Long Museum, Shanghai, Museo Jumex, Mexico City and Fondazione Trussardi, Milan, among many others. A frequent collaborator of the Deste Foundation, he has curated and co-curated more than a dozen exhibitions in Athens. Photo credit: Marco De Scalzi.

Dakis Joannou established DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art in 1983. Through its exhibition space in Athens, DESTE engages in an extensive exhibition program that promotes emerging as well as established artists and aims to broaden the audience for contemporary art, enhance opportunities for young artists and explore the connections between contemporary art and culture. In 2009, DESTE opened Projectspace Slaughterhouse on the island of Hydra, which hosts annual site-specific exhibitions. Photo credit: Alexia Antsakli.

George Condo, Massimiliano Gioni and Dakis Joannou on 'The Mad and the Lonely'
Wednesday, March 25, 7 PM
Strand Book Store
828 Broadway 3rd Floor, Rare Book Room
New York, NY 10003
Order tickets here