Douglas Kolk
29 Oct - 13 Dec 2008
DOUGLAS KOLK
"Doom Holiday"
29. 10. 2008 - 13. 12. 2008
Pilar Parra & Romero gallery is pleased to present Douglas Kolk’s first solo show in Spain under the title Doom Holiday.
Douglas kolk’s works deal with questions of identity. Shapes and figures seem to be constantly searching for a sense of self. In his drawings, influenced by Pop Art, media images and fashion, he emphasizes human depth, vulnerability and the extreme
psychological states which Kolk recovers from his own past since throughout his childhood and teenage years there was a constant presence of death.
In his work and from his time perspective Kolk draws together the shadow representing death, with the physical image of life. The artist creates an amazing
yet limited visual language through a focused reduction of the forms, lines and colours in which the sentences are integrated to be perpetuated by the audience.
In Doom Holiday, the outline drawings have given way to brushstrokes with vibrating
life. Kolk’s expressive trace is accompanied by magazines illustrations, objects’ silhouette and shadows. The mixture of drawing and painting as a mean of expression complements the broad range of individual images. The coloration, with its
gradations of intensity, is full of contrasts as he uses this spectrum of colour with the intention to overwhelm us. This is Kolk’s way of transferring to the viewer the emotional states of his figures, all of them apparently lost in a world that no longer offers anything to cling on. Themes of earlier works have obtained a more dramatic profile and appear to be fragmented as in the work “Crazy Lady” (183x214) and “Blue Hotel” (183x183). Quotations from pop culture, fashion and music are the thematic link for the superficial icons of desire which seem to be the only ideals we can aspire to. Something similar can be identified in advertising slogans, so fleeting, that they don’t allow a moment for reflection denying any permanence to the image. Kolk’s collages imitates this rapid tempo and friezes it for the viewer. It allows him to artistically present the chaos of modern life as a principle in its own right.
The works: “Garden” (200x200), “We’re Going down” (203x213), “Let’s go to the devil” (202x186), “Statue” (203x213), “Good bye crickets” (205x213), “One way”
(221x213), “I’m going to beauty Word” (230x188) and the sculpture “Drinking man”
(187x56x50), are also part of the exhibition.
Douglas Kolk was born in 1963 in Newark, New Jersey. He received formation mainly in New York and now he currently lives and works in Boston.
His work has being exhibited in the galleries Arndt & Partner (Berlin), David Zwirner (New York), Kasseler Kunstverein (Kassel), Kunsthalle of Mannheim and in the Royal Academy of Arts in the exhibition “USA Today” from the Saatchi
collection.
His work is in public and privates collections such as the MoMa (New York), Museum Frieder Burda (Baden-Baden), Cisneros Fontanals, Arts Foundation (Miami), Sammlung Falckenberg (Hamburg), Burger Collection (Switzerland), The CAder Wennet collection (USA), Chadha Art Collection (Netherlands) and the Saatchi Gallery (London).
"Doom Holiday"
29. 10. 2008 - 13. 12. 2008
Pilar Parra & Romero gallery is pleased to present Douglas Kolk’s first solo show in Spain under the title Doom Holiday.
Douglas kolk’s works deal with questions of identity. Shapes and figures seem to be constantly searching for a sense of self. In his drawings, influenced by Pop Art, media images and fashion, he emphasizes human depth, vulnerability and the extreme
psychological states which Kolk recovers from his own past since throughout his childhood and teenage years there was a constant presence of death.
In his work and from his time perspective Kolk draws together the shadow representing death, with the physical image of life. The artist creates an amazing
yet limited visual language through a focused reduction of the forms, lines and colours in which the sentences are integrated to be perpetuated by the audience.
In Doom Holiday, the outline drawings have given way to brushstrokes with vibrating
life. Kolk’s expressive trace is accompanied by magazines illustrations, objects’ silhouette and shadows. The mixture of drawing and painting as a mean of expression complements the broad range of individual images. The coloration, with its
gradations of intensity, is full of contrasts as he uses this spectrum of colour with the intention to overwhelm us. This is Kolk’s way of transferring to the viewer the emotional states of his figures, all of them apparently lost in a world that no longer offers anything to cling on. Themes of earlier works have obtained a more dramatic profile and appear to be fragmented as in the work “Crazy Lady” (183x214) and “Blue Hotel” (183x183). Quotations from pop culture, fashion and music are the thematic link for the superficial icons of desire which seem to be the only ideals we can aspire to. Something similar can be identified in advertising slogans, so fleeting, that they don’t allow a moment for reflection denying any permanence to the image. Kolk’s collages imitates this rapid tempo and friezes it for the viewer. It allows him to artistically present the chaos of modern life as a principle in its own right.
The works: “Garden” (200x200), “We’re Going down” (203x213), “Let’s go to the devil” (202x186), “Statue” (203x213), “Good bye crickets” (205x213), “One way”
(221x213), “I’m going to beauty Word” (230x188) and the sculpture “Drinking man”
(187x56x50), are also part of the exhibition.
Douglas Kolk was born in 1963 in Newark, New Jersey. He received formation mainly in New York and now he currently lives and works in Boston.
His work has being exhibited in the galleries Arndt & Partner (Berlin), David Zwirner (New York), Kasseler Kunstverein (Kassel), Kunsthalle of Mannheim and in the Royal Academy of Arts in the exhibition “USA Today” from the Saatchi
collection.
His work is in public and privates collections such as the MoMa (New York), Museum Frieder Burda (Baden-Baden), Cisneros Fontanals, Arts Foundation (Miami), Sammlung Falckenberg (Hamburg), Burger Collection (Switzerland), The CAder Wennet collection (USA), Chadha Art Collection (Netherlands) and the Saatchi Gallery (London).