Kooi favors swirling imagery that recalls organs, coral reefs, and fleshy fruit. Her abstracted forms are soft and fertile; they’re also ultra-sensory, like something strange and squishy you’d stick your hand into during a Halloween game. References to interiority are clear, but mysteries remain. A palette of lush, oceanic pastels pushes this sense of the mystic alongside the organic. If you dissected a mermaid, you might find Kinke Kooi’s paintings inside.
Read MoreAvallone’s playground drawings are precise, technical in their accuracy, but are rendered on rough, handmade paper in varying muted tones. The interplay cements several visual dichotomies at play in Permission/Pleasure: fluidity vs. precision, childhood vs. adulthood, memory vs. the present, dreams vs. reality.
Read MoreIn Souvenir at Nationale, ceramic artist Emily Counts explores memory and intimacy through mystic objects centering on nature and the body. Counts emphasize the varying relationships between her objects and experiments with object utility, bringing human-object associations to the forefront.
Read MoreWhile umm no sources imagery from Chinese and American culture, the exhibition holds a universal appeal. It manages to inspire laughter in a historically painful time but doesn’t deny the ongoing gravity of cultural conflict, authoritarianism, and xenophobia.
Read MoreShamanism is in our DNA. This practice, involving varied methods of altering consciousness in order to commune with spirit realms, dates back to the early Paleolithic era.
Read MoreKnecht’s paintings rest in a dichotomous, fringe space. Her color palette is bright but sickly, her figures grin through pain. Loose, wobbling bodies move like the wind, but also feel trapped and isolated on the canvas. While Knecht’s references to folklore and mythology are rooted in deeply human emotions and understandings, her figures are also experiencing a newness—her mothers feel profound joy while facing discomfort and challenges yet unknown.
Read MoreThen there are curious snake-like symbols, and a cartoonish, shadowy figure crouched in a corner, his eyes wide. Click, click, click. The story widens, titillates. A mysterious death, a haunted house, vampires, New Age.
Read MoreAt Melanie Flood Projects, I Won’t Last A Day Without You, curated by Yaelle S. Amir, the exhibition’s prints are displayed in several series along the walls, framed works overlapping with vinyl prints to create fluid horizontal movement. The framed prints do not have glass separating them from the viewer, creating intimacy and highlighting the dot matrix texture of each work.
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