Details:
① Artwork:
Cousins not Twins
This painting depicts a dressing room that is distorting and curving, similar to an acid trip where the surrounding architecture appears to bend and objects inside anthropomorphize. The faces reference Sock and Buskin, or Comedy and Tragedy. The composition asks viewers to wonder: "Are they friends? Are they related? Do they even like each other?"
This composition is part of a diverse body of work by the artist that explores ways of seeing and being seen. The series is steeped in uncanny, dramaturgic tropes from stylized razzle-dazzle stage productions: the harlequin, the vanity mirror, the curtain, the clown and the mask. The artist employs this existential iconography to question the ways in which masks impact the freedom and farce of daily performance.
Specs:
③ Artist:
Alex Kerr’s work depicts blithe scenes turned uncomfortable, distorted fun houses that examine authentic selfhood and queer identity. The artist builds dizzying, technicolor worlds using repetition and disquieting color and pattern—as well a variety of media, including oil, acrylic sheets, ceramic and wood. Kerr’s compositions employ the iconography of a stylized version of razzle-dazzle stage productions to pose important questions about freedom and the farce of daily performance, including: is there truth at the bottom of the lie?
BIO:
Alex Kerr was born in 1989.
Solo exhibitions of Kerr’s work have taken place at: the University of California, Los Angeles (2022); Mint in Atlanta, Georgia (2018); the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center in Atlanta, Georgia (2018); and The Blue House in Dayton, Ohio (2016).
Group exhibitions that have included Kerr’s work have taken place at: Lump Gallery in Raleigh, North Carolina (2019); Camayuhs in Atlanta, Georgia (2018); the Mason-Scharfenstein Museum of Art in Demorest, Georgia (2018); and Hathaway Contemporary in Atlanta, Georgia (2017).
Kerr lives and works in Los Angeles, California.