SELF-ish

K. Imperial Fine Art is pleased to present its summer group show that will feature artists whose work examines issues of identity and self.

Emil Alzamora harnesses a wide range of materials and techniques to deliver unexpected interpretations of the sculpted human figure. He often distorts, elongates, deconstructs, or encases his forms to reveal an emotional or physical situation, or to tell a story. From his “I Dream a Universe” series, Alzamora is expanding on the traditional bust, attempting to capture a state of being or condition and metaphor for something subconscious or fleeting. “I think of them as portraits of our inner world or of our spirit.”

Peter Combe creates his work using literal swatches of color (paint samples that he punches into disks)… and light. Almost exclusively a portraitist, his works rely heavily on the reflection of color and an acute understanding of how those colors will blend and mutate affording his portraits an unusual nuance and movement; an experience that creates within a portrait a sense of the shifting/changing self. We’ll be exhibiting examples from an ongoing series of his devoted to intimate portraits of the eye. The eye (or phonetically-identical “I”) punctuates these notions of self and recognition of self as well as knowing and seeing.

Over the years, Deborah Dancy has collected small “Made in Occupied Japan” porcelain figurines of colonial figures – sentimental versions of 17th century society. “I immediately found them humorous and disturbing: their ‘whiteness’ stood as a compelling paradox – Japanese creativeness mimicking European court.” The Queen Bea series was born out of a desire to counter these objects with a presence of blackness. “She stands in opposition to total whiteness of the court of figures that surround her. She is the Queen and the court is hers.”

Martin Palottini’s multi-media drawings feature hyper-realistic faces emboldened within sparse, rudimentary bodies, or echoes of inner expressions embroidered or punctured or punctuated in gold, ghost-like, over the “real” and believable serene facade. In what is missing is meaning. “The human figure is unavoidable to me, although it has to claim its place in the work since the space can many times determine the rhythm of the composition and the empty spaces draw the attention.”

Kevin Earl Taylor’s work delves into how human identity as part of the natural world is interwoven and impressed by the effects of the current geological and ecological changes within that world. “The objects I produce are interrogations.  They exist as curious inquiries into the ostensible dichotomy between the human animal and mutating partitions of nature. […] Amalgamating scientific, genetic and anthropological source material, I survey and ultimately depict hybrid landscapes where diverse aspects of human physiology mesh with the origins of species.”

Samantha Wall’s drawings are an exploration into family identity, cultural history, and loss. “Working from photographs that I take of myself and the women in my family, I’ve created portraits that interweave fragments of an alternative world built from [Korean] mythologies and personal history. The bodies in my drawings become bridges to a past that would otherwise be inaccessible.”

SELF-ish will be on view July 10 – August 31, 2019 with an opening reception Thursday, July 11th 5:30 – 7:30pm.