D&K

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on February 17, 2013 at 9:06pm

Curator’s Comment:

 

These are curiously enticing figurative works.  The stylistic abstraction present in most of the paintings makes the figures stoically rigid, as if they are statues rather than living beings.  The achromatic palette of the flesh tone and heavy dark contouring in this piece contribute to this chiseled quality, though these two seem more engaged in a specific and intimate gesture.  That one figure is shielding the others gaze is ironically echoed in the partner’s two dark nipples- starkly contrasted outward, they possibly function as surrogate eyes.  I interpret both figures as male, but like that they have faintly androgynous features as well. The universality of their bodies- similarities in their hair and overall proportions - removes definitive indicators of characteristic gender and race, and allows for broader personal narratives. The background is also idiosyncratic in that it functions as a flat backdrop.  Removing any atmospheric perspective in the illusionary figure-ground relationship, they ultimately vacillate between human flesh and patterned motif.