Lola Gil: Outside In Doors // Todd Carpenter: Shadow Discarnate

Lola Gil – Outside In Doors
Exhibition Dates: April 8th – May 6th, 2017
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 8th, 7 - 10pm
RSVP Essential to rsvp@kpprojects.net // Guest List at the door

Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 12 – 6pm

KP Projects is excited to announce its upcoming exhibition, Outside In Doors, a series of new works from painter Lola Gil. Outside In Doors is a story of exploration, discovery, enlightenment and growth, as well as messages of comfort and reassurance from experiences gained and lessons learned.

A two-year process, Lola began painting this series in January of 2015, inspired by a journey into the subconscious to deepen the enlightenment of self, and chronicle her metaphysical voyage through visual narrative. Although the outset of each works comes from a personal place, each painting expands beyond the scope of individual experience. As a vessel for lucid dreaming and a means of collective imagination, each composition invites the viewer to step outside of their own reality and in through the door of each painting.

Viewing their dreamlike world, while wondering what’s beyond the vision within the frame, Lola’s figures stare off in wistful contemplation. The silhouette bodies express a sense of cosmic mystery where thematic out-of-body ‘seeing’ is truly believing. Elements in each of the paintings inspire an arousal of the senses – the repetition of eyes and ears parallel vision, hearing, and perception.

Throughout her career, Lola has described her approach to painting as narrative escapism. Escapism’s central purpose is to draw us away from our everyday troubles, and, to sometimes help us to fantasize ourselves as better, more enlightened, creators of our own stories. This is not meant as a temporary distraction, but a greater expansion of ourselves; an escape into the artist’s world, with our own personal experiences reflected in the canvases.

As I worked on “Outside In Doors” I was reminded of a quote from the late American novelist and short-story writer, Kurt Vonnegut, “I want to stay as close to the edge as I can, without going over. On the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.” I find this deeply profound, not just as a catalyst to inspire me to chase the wilder imagination that resides inside of me, but also as a sort of key that unlocks these doors we all tend to be stuck behind.

So, I invite the viewer to experience just standing still for a moment and allowing time for reflection and learning. Our worlds, and the relationships within our worlds, are seen differently when you begin to listen and observe. – Lola Gil

Todd Carpenter – Shadow Discarnate
Exhibition Dates: April 8th – May 6th, 2017
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 8th, 7 - 10pm
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 12 – 6pm

KP Projects is proud to present a solo exhibition of new work from Todd Carpenter, Shadow Discarnate, an exploration into the perception of reality as immaterial facades of light and shadow.

In their very nature, shadows are disembodied, an absence of physical matter. Carpenter’s urban and natural landscapes capture this fleeting essence of light as substance. As such, Carpenter’s rich, impasto paintings are not reflective of real, physical surroundings but our perception of the outside world through light and shadow.

Carpenter’s investigation of light and space can be defined as a phenomenological study of essences, including the essence of perception and of consciousness. A philosophical musing made tangible through the physicality of oil on board, these paintings are a method of describing the nature of our perceptual contact with the world. Shadow Discarnate relives the human experience of encountering space and place.

Instigating the atmosphere of a place – the smell, temperature, sound, breeze and intangible realities of a locale’s aura, Carpenter captures how an environment can define our identities on a deeper level. Shadows and light filter into the viewer’s emotions, engendering a range of moods. From an ominous foreboding of thunderous clouds, to the pale glow of daybreak, the earnest synergy of physical space trigger awareness and feeling.

“Light bears messages about where it has been, written in the distortions traced in its rays, but it is only light itself that we ever truly meet. For our eyes take in not the world, but merely light, and light is a shady messenger that cannot be trusted. What it shows is only shadows, projected on the dark wall of our subterranean imagination. Reality remains a mystery, or perhaps more precisely reality has no appearance at all other than the illusion produced by the mechanisms of minds.

If the images evoke places, they are places that can be felt but not known, and the evoked feeling is of the mystery at understanding that the real world hides behind our glimpses” – Todd Carpenter