Kohn Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of exciting new works by Ilana Savdie, Alicia Adamerovich, Chiffon Thomas, Kate Barbee, Heidi Hahn, William Brickel, Li Hei Di, Alia Ahmad, Siji Krishnan, and Jinbin Chen. In a collective debut at Expo Chicago, this roaster of emerging contemporary artists brings forth a collection of works that elucidate modes of representation using distorted, figurative depictions and conceptual abstractions that command materiality, intertwine with the artists’ respective practices, and enunciate artistic sensibilities.
The figural representations of Heidi Hahn, William Brickel, Siji Krishnan and Ilana Savdie superimpose discussions of the self and bodily autonomy onto multifaceted notions of identity. Heidi Hahn’s gestural and spectral paintings explore shifting definitions of public and private self in the female form. Similarly, William Brickel approaches the human figure as means to examine the coexisting phenomena of the self and the other. Siji Krishnan reclaims, reconfigures, and manifests history in delicate, large-scale rice paper paintings that explode the boundaries of material possibility by infusing dream-like scenarios with playful renderings of memory and belonging related to her upbringing in southern India. Ilana Savdie inverts traditional associations of figuration with her approach to composition–and perspective–that is culturally influenced by her Colombian heritage and history; posing questions that consider migration, foreignness, and familiarity. Further, Savdie’s electrifying, hot-colored surreal works use the body as a stage to explore themes of invasion, control, and defiance.
In kinship with Savdie’s use of the body as a stage, Chinese-born artists Jinbin Chen and Li Hei Di’s paintings consider complexities surrounding gender and desire. Chen’s delicate color palettes create environments that traverse a terrain of liminal gender dispositions couched in vulnerability, fragility, honesty, and comfort. In contrast, Li’s broad canvases reach towards seduction and the ephemeral mating dance that occurs in the anticipation of wanting.
Barbee, and Thomas merge identity with process, synthesizing craft, sculpture, and weaving to excavate the fragility and emotionality of self through traditionally utilitarian materials and architectural debris. Thomas’ sculptural work grapples with conflicting beliefs, values, and desires, through his lens as a trans and queer artist raised within a strong religious environment. In the same vein, Alicia Adamerovich’s union of carpentry and surreal imagery expands on the picture space, traversing the psychological effects environments have on interpersonal relationships.
Rounding out the presentation are Alia Ahmad’s vibrant, abstract landscapes that backdrop her recollection of time and place. In her current exhibition A meadow … from a dream, Ahmad creates social spaces within linear impressions of the desert, playing on the tense contradiction between extreme emptiness of place and lush flora. Her dense terrains take inspiration from aesthetics of unfinished woven textiles, which in turn become sites for the interweaving of process, spatiality, and stimuli.
We anticipate that this presentation of artists will facilitate a critically relevant and illuminating dialogue in congruence with their contemporaries and current art viewership.
