Seldom shown as a standalone series, Warhol’s Oxidation Paintings continue to challenge conventional notions of what painting can be. Moving away from the photographic imagery that had defined his work since the 1960s, Warhol embraced the unpredictable possibilities of abstraction. Instead of celebrity portraits and repetitive silkscreens, these works feature gold or copper metallic surfaces transformed by chemically reactive, vitamin-infused urine. The result is a series of corroded compositions where acid greens and oxidized blacks bloom across shimmering, unstable grounds.

These works will be on view at Skarstedt in NY until 28 June, 2025. Andy Warhol: Oxidation Paintings invites viewers to consider Warhol not only as a chronicler of fame and commodity, but as a shrewd manipulator of materials, gestures, and myths.

Formally, these works nod toward gestural abstraction. Both playful and deliberate, they engage in a direct conversation with Jackson Pollock’s all-over compositions—long celebrated as symbols of postwar American painting’s heroic masculinity and artistic genius. Warhol’s Oxidation Paintings, however, offer a deliberately subversive counterpoint. Here, urine—applied by splattering, pouring, or brushing—mimics the expressive flair of Pollock’s drip technique while dismantling its mythic status. These are action paintings of a different order, reimagined through a lens of waste, eroticism, and chemical alchemy.

Image: Andy Warhol, Oxidation, 1977-78, urine and copper paint on linen, 76 x 52 ¼ inches (192 x 132.7 cm). © 2025 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.