Chris Kienke's Exit Six: On the Road

Chris Kienke
Exit Six: On the Road
March 31 - April 24, 2016

Amos Eno Gallery is pleased to present Exit Six: On the Road, an exhibition of new paintings by Chris Kienke. An opening reception will be held on Friday, April 1st from 7-9 PM at the gallery’s new location at 56 Bogart Street in Brooklyn, NY. The new group of paintings in this exhibition is part of Kienke’s ongoing series, Exit Six.

With Exit Six: On the Road, Kienke continues his engagement with images of canonic “American Hollywood” that have been distorted due to a glitch in the electronic signal between the DVD and the television screen. Beyond the surface content of the work, Kienke is interested in how the visual languages of film and television inform the creation of an individual’s beliefs and sense of identity. Each painting begins on screen as a glitch that is further abstracted on canvas. Through this “post-analog” approach, the artist questions the demarcation between notions of reality and virtuality as they inform and influence the creation of cultural identity. With Kienke’s characteristic aesthetic fluency, these “tele-visual” images integrate old and new technology, challenging traditional notions of painting and situating this work within discourses on contemporary society and its relationship to technology.

Born in Rochester, New York, Chris Kienke’s work has been exhibited in over 70 shows including recent solo exhibitions in the Art Center at National Central University in Taiwan (2015) the University of Wisconsin in Osh Kosh and Jackson State University in Mississippi (2014). Kienke exhibited in the Florence Biennale in 2011, the Brussels Biennial in 2009 and was included in New American Paintings in September 2009. Kienke has been a fellow at Hospitalfield House in Scotland in 1998-1999 and at the Vermont Studio Center in 2003 and 2007. His work is in the permanent collections of ABN Amro Bank in Dubai, Savannah College of Art and Design, Sharjah Art Museum (UAE) and the United Kingdom National Collection. Kienke received his MFA from Southern Illinois University - Carbondale in 2000 and his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1994. He is on the faculty of the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.