Mel Prest – Looks Like a Flavor, November 5th to December 31st, 2024

K. Imperial Fine Art is excited to present Looks Like a Flavor, a new collection of paintings by artist Mel Prest. In her second solo exhibition with the gallery, Prest explores color and visual relationships through thoughtfully executed freehand lines and a carefully curated palette. Her utilization of simultaneous contrast creates stunning visual effects of movement and chromatic aberration. The show will be on view from November 5th to December 31st, 2024. The gallery and the artist welcome the public to the opening reception on Thursday, November 7th, from 5 – 7 pm.

A longtime abstract painter, Mel Prest derives inspiration from colors, sounds, and scents in the outdoors. She brings these experiences into the studio and reimagines them through layers of hand-painted lines. Her arrangements record colors that stand out to her in everyday life: The striking contrast of autumnal foliage surrounded by green is distilled into an all-red painting; the smell of blooming lilacs becomes a lattice of purple; the light of the setting sun from behind a cloud resolves into a glowing green composition. Color palette and theory are a driving factor in her process, being integral to the creation of a sensory effect or the evocation of memory. The show title, Looks Like a Flavor, aptly highlights the almost synesthetic response evoked by the intangible illusory qualities of the paintings. In each piece, three layers of improvised linework in three different colors come together through proximity and varying degrees of opacity to produce a scintillating field whose perceived spectrum belies the underlying economy of chroma.

Though long established in her distinctive method, Prest continues to find new ways to express her sources of inspiration within each painting. In her own words, she is “digging one deep well, rather than digging a lot of individual wells, trying to find what else I can see there.” Lately, Prest plays with the idea of imperfection–a challenge to her practice’s established standard, whose patterns appear structural, almost mechanical-looking. Up close, variations in the brushstrokes–evidence of the human touch–are more visible. In this series, Prest emphasizes irregularity. She chooses not to smooth out paint that pools up when she lifts the brush to reload, thus creating another shape within the composition: an organic form that juxtaposes with the even linework. Her new works on paper take the same concept in a different direction. She uses watercolor, a less controllable medium than her usual acrylic, which allows for new kinds of value, mark variations, and transparencies.

Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, Prest now lives and works in San Francisco, California. Her art

has been exhibited internationally, including at The Drawing Center, New York; The Weatherspoon Museum of Art, Durham, NC; IS Projects, Leiden, Netherlands; Saturation Point, London; and Nakaochiai Gallery, Tokyo. Her work is held in collections at Apple, The Berkeley Art Museum, The Crocker Museum of Art, Google, Kaiser Permanente, and more. As an independent curator, Prest has organized shows from Amsterdam to Zagreb. She is a co-founder of Transmitter, a collaborative artistic initiative that features underrepresented artists in Brooklyn, New York.

Looks Like a Flavor will be on display from November 5th to December 31st, 2024. The gallery is by appointment only. Please contact the gallery at kimperialfineart@me.com or 415.277.7230 for inquiries or to make an appointment.