Opening Reception
Friday, September 23, 7 - 9 pm
Artist Talk
Saturday, September 24, 2 pm
Statements for There in the Air and adjacent work:
There in the Air
I have meticulously created paintings that portray surreal narratives I have experienced over the past two years. Although I did not want it to be explicitly so or blatantly obvious, I am using covid as a lens that distorts the intricacies of our world. Hence the show’s title. Combined with referential imagery, contrasted darks and lights, atmosphere and humor, I wanted to tell these stories and show contradictions.
The paintings mainly depict New York City and capture the emptiness of urban life during the pandemic. There are no figures in the majority of these paintings. There is just one, Flight Over Leonard St., depicting a boy on a rooftop who is playing alone amongst imagined monsters that he will soon lose his toy plane to. I feel we can relate to this child as recent times have brought about new fears and uncertainties of the future. Yet his toy airplane is flying towards light. There is hope of a safe landing and retrieval of the plane.
Strong light is a motif that carries through the work as a symbol of a better future. Some paintings are homages to paintings from the past, like Arnold Bocklin’s Isle of the Dead. Others take us to barren lands in an end of the world scenario like Desert Thoughts, an homage to Lars von Triers’ film Melancholia.
In Circles
This series was started years ago after the loss of a loved one as a type of lengthy meditation between my commissioned work and abstract work. I began painting these landscapes as a means to mentally escape to, with future plans of travel. The project took years to complete and as a result its meaning evolved overtime. At first I wanted these places all to myself but even though that intention changed, the lack of figures inhabiting the spaces is a product of that. The isolation a painter must go through to work can seem intense but I used it as a way to find myself and as a motif in the work. I hope now that viewers are also able to escape through these small portholes and into the landscapes.
The first six paintings are from found photographs and the final four are from select locales I was grateful to have visited myself. They began to become documentations of the new, wonderful things I was experiencing. The views depicted were chosen for their uniqueness and in the cases in which they were found photographs, the connection I felt through the photographer.
Skulls
This is a long-running memento mori series that celebrates life with motifs, humor and having fun with the paint. The skulls initially started as a simple color theory project to occupy my time in the start of the pandemic, and I began incorporating more literal themes into them. There are homages to other artists, nods to books and movies, and a celebration of all kinds of human achievement and food.
Kyle Andrew Phillips lives in Brooklyn, NY. He has had multiple group shows in NYC and abroad as well as solo shows in Connecticut. His work can be found in permanent collection of The New Britain Museum of American Art in CT and numerous private collections across the country.
Exhibition ends October 22, 2022.