In Visual Dialogue

UNIX Gallery presents In Visual Dialogue, featuring new paintings from Desire Obtain Cherish, Melanie Comber, Christian Voigt and more. The exhibtion is on view at UNIX Gallery, 532 W 24th St. New York, NY, from December 11 - January 16, 2015.

British artist Melanie Comber’s distinctive oil and pigment works elicit an emotional response through their abstract composition and perspective. The artist layers diffrent ratios of oil paint to pigment, giving a rich coloration with a unique, bold matte textured finish. Once applied, Comber introduces a third dimension to her works by carving haptic patterns that evoke terrestrial scenes of beaches, roads, and other landscapes.

Christian Voigt has developed a language capable of telling new stories. He continually works to refine a pictorial idiom, the stories he wants to tell, the feelings he convey. His principal areas of interest are landscape and architecture, but he also does portraits and nudes. The travels associated with his projects and places call for concentration for the ability to fully understand people, their history andtheir religion. His series on the vanished architecture of the past and its appearance in our own times come across just as vividly as the craziness of today’s societies that his images depict. “My pictures are created with the camera, not on the computer,” he says, with a reference to the complicated technology and processing that goes into his creations. Born in Munich, Voigt currently lives and works in Hamburg, Germany and the south of France.

Los Angeles-based artist Desire Obtain Cherish creates controversial works by twisting appropriation of art, luxury brands, material culture, sex, drugs, pop icons, and questioning the very system that holds it all in such high esteem. Through cutting-edge material - UV cast resin and other amalgamations - and exquisite craftsmanship, he creates immaculately produced sculpture and mixed media works that confront the viewer with a mirror of the commodification of society. Desire Obtain Cherish’s sardonic, vibrant pieces expose society’s voracity and limitations, and questions commercial promises of fulfillment and happiness that end in dependency.

Eugenio Merino is known for his controversial Hyperrealist sculptures – including dictators, politicians, artists, and other institutionalized figureheads – tackling themes of politics, religion, and socioeconomic standards with the aim of questioning these systemic, supposed truths. Merino uses irony, metaphor, and satire to make his art a space for the exchange of dialogue, free thought, and finding beauty in the germination of ideas and human agency. Known for his more controversial sculptures such as For the Love of Go(l)d or Stairway to Heaven, Merino works in various media, including drawings, videos, objects and sculptures; bronze, resin and silicone are all part of his cutting oeuvre. Each idea requires a specific material. These ideas are the language of the artist.

In his paintings, KwangHo Shin attempts to capture the complexity of human emotion and the experience of the mind as we perceive it visually. Harkening back to Abstract Expressionism, Shin employs intense and vibrant colors in order to depict individualistic expression of emotion and a sense of self. He applies oils and charcoal in thick brushstrokes to distort and exaggerate the subject’s facial features and confront the viewer with the resulting emotional impact these painterly effects have on our understanding of the subject. Shin deliberately neglects the use of harmonious color and precise form in an effort to extend the internal mental world into an external reality. Shin is able to document the psychological change and clash that arises in the self in his portraits.