Harper's presents JJ Manford + James Rosenquist, pairing Manford's new paintings with Rosenquist's little-known early-90s Gift Wrapped Doll series. Both painters mine popular culture — Manford through dense, tactile domestic interiors collapsing high and low references; Rosenquist through slick, billboard-scale close-ups of cellophane-wrapped dolls where display and suffocation merge. Their surfaces diverge sharply — layered oilstick against industrial polish — but both share heightened chroma, a surrealist edge, and a preoccupation with manufactured desire and surrogate figures mediating everyday life.
