My List of Demands is Andrew Kuo's second solo show at Taxter & Spengemann. The artist has created a body of work that is as visual as it is textual, direct, indirect, romantic, sarcastic, entitled, and self-deprecating. His works on paper, paintings, photographs, and sculptures are rendered outpourings of his mixed emotions, indisputably all about him however disarmingly universal.
This exhibition is populated by several strains in the artist's practice and his tragi-comic gift for storytelling pervades all. In his foot noted "chart" paintings on paper, Kuo quantifies his personal life into info-graphics whose forms are more abstract than representational. His confessional style takes its cues as much from pop music as Sophie Calle, with one eye on the now-conventional exhibitionism of social media. Kuo's mind is a vortex of longing, hard-wired with exceptional organizational skills and no shortage of criticality. The social landscape is pocked with land mines, and his work addresses these frustrating interactions, deflecting at least some of the loathing from the self.Doleful syntax is replaced by paintings and photographs of flowers, a potent symbol of romantic aspiration and mourning: These text-less works consist of a series of iPhone pictures printed, mounted, and transformed by meticulous non-annotated circle graphs applied to their surfaces, suggestive of a face. And for some time the artist has distilled the matrix of his feelings in a series of gesturally rich, carefully rendered paintings of flowers, in full bloom, suffocating in plastic wrap, or displayed on a table or desk.Taxter & Spengemann
459 West 18th Street, New York, NY 10011
t. 212.924.0212 f. 212.352.3540
Hours: Tues - Sat, 10 am - 6 pm
Andrew Kuo
My List of Demands March 31 - April 30, 2011
Opening Reception: Thursday, March 31, 2011, 6 to 8 pm
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