Kari Cholnoky
NYC
April 27 - May 25, 2017
Artist Statement
This work seeks to represent a contemporary psychological state – one where distinctions between the body and machine//animate and inanimate//construction and destruction have become confused and where the institutional distinctions between male and female//soft and hard//beautiful and ugly are destroyed. The physical distance between the viewer and the work comes to represent the gap between seeing and knowing – the paintings present themselves as unstable beings capable of autonomous mutation. They are familiar and alien at once; composed of both industrial and craft based material, propelling the viewer to consider how and what we consume, and how and why we are consumed—body and object alike—both on an individual and global level. I have Donald Judd’s words on Lee Bontecou ringing in my ears: “she linked something as social as war to something as private as sex, making one an aspect of the other”.
Website: www.karicholnoky.com
Instagram: @kcholnoky