Carmichael Gallery of Contemporary Art is pleased to announce TAKE A DEEP BREATH, a group exhibition featuring new artworks by Asbestos, Cherri Wood, The Dark, Kngee and Know Hope. While their methods of composition are as different as the cities they call home, the artists align to confront innocence, iniquity, alienation, and personal and urban neglect. Artwork on display will comprise of a wide source of media, including hyper-realistic stencils, intricate three-dimensional cardboard works, large-scale photographs, oil pastel drawings, mixed media collages, and raspberry-infused watercolors on paper and canvas. An opening reception for the artists will be held on Saturday, June 21, from 8PM – Midnight, and is sponsored by ALARM Magazine and Imeem. The Dark, Kngee, and Know Hope will be in attendance.
Dublin-based street artist Asbestos finds the dark, dank, and forgotten objects of the street and transforms them into vibrant pieces that share the history and present-day life of the city and its inhabitants. His flair for mixed media combines photography, collage, gold leaf, spray paint and acrylics to create unforgettable imagery bursting with intensity. Highly skilled in portraiture, Asbestos has recently lent his focus not only to his subjects' faces but also their hands, broadening the viewer's perspective to encapsulate the part of the human body he believes conveys the essence of the individual.
Cherri Wood also studies the complex subtleties of the human form, her artwork roving the depths of feminine distress and despair. Describing her pieces as “a cluster of ink explosions,” she splashes the paper and canvas with diet coke and smudges it with willow charcoal and graphite. While the faces of her waifish young women are often concealed, their limber bodies express all, at times prostrate with hysteria, at others stiffly upright in what is only an assumed air of calm. In spite of their predicament, however, Cherri’s women refuse to surrender, their breathtaking beauty seeping through their anguish. Her current work marks a new direction and vibrant color palette, altering the mood of each works.
Such disconnect can be perceived in the layered urban and natural landscapes of Kngee. “For this show, I tried to re-conceptualize the streets as an outgrowth of the concrete jungle,” he explains as he captures the glowing majesty of the contours of Boston and New York against the inner-city grime and contamination. A new direction for the artist, this elaborate stencil series explores the city as a sterile environment, so abuzz with human activity that no one ever has the time to truly stop and connect. With contrasting textures, a colorful, gritty aesthetic, and a unique play on perspective, Kngee’s moody shadows and clean-cut lines invite the viewer to simultaneously contemplate two contrasting environments of turbulent streets and Zen foliage.
Haunted since childhood by visions of the apocalypse, Vancouver-based artist The Dark interprets what he has seen in spectacularly large-scale street pieces, then stages unsolicited installation snapshots of his spellbound public. Amused by the irony of the street art movement - “the romanticized notion of the creative process, a sort of ‘everybody loves an underdog idealism’ with the artists enveloping themselves in a kind of untouchable mysticism” – the provocative artist thrashes out a novel perspective on the ownership of information and the conceptual representation of perceived intangibility. The magical desolation of The Dark’s visions conveys a stark, poignant narrative of a civilization in decline, overwhelmed by an overarching theme of indifference.
For Know Hope, the impressive installation and body of work he has created for this show depicts a series of moments for a lovable hooded hunchback who wears his patched heart on his sleeve and wanders the world committing simple but powerful acts of kindness. A literal manifestation of a significant life chapter in which his character examines his relationship with himself, his surroundings, and what has led him to where he is today, the installation is composed of three layers: mural, multi-dimensional framed pieces, and free-standing elements. Through observations and reactions to a "busted" world, Know Hope’s character enters varying states of anticipation, awkwardness, disappointment, and despair, before finally discovering a place of contentment. Says the artist of his politically charged thematic material, “I try to deal with the minor human conditions and situations that make these issues up, rather than directly address the issues themselves… I hope it doesn’t sound arrogant of me to want those things to be seen, but I do try my best to be as honest as I can when saying that we're all in this together.”
