THE HUMAN ECLECTIC Exhibition

Image: Kent Williams, Mother and Daughter, 2009, Oil on linen, 42 x 50 in.

Finished the painting for the exhibition, already shot it, and the announcement poster is designed and at printers. The show is coming up fast!

This is a group exhibition that I'm proud to be curating at Merry Karnowsky Gallery in Los Angeles. Twelve artists total, providing two to three works each, this is promising to be a powerful, diverse, and broad ranging exhibition. At present, all but one of the artists, Jon Muth, are planning to be in attendance at the opening night reception. Here's the press release copy:

THE HUMAN ECLECTIC | An Exhibition Curated by Kent Williams
Peter Liashkov, Barron Storey, Jon J Muth, Kent Williams, Aaron Smith, Dean Karr, Mari Inukai, Chris Anthony, Jennifer Poon, Jason Shawn Alexander, Kevin Llewellyn, Sara Escamilla
October 17 – November 7, 2009 Opening Reception: October 17, 8 – 11 pm
MERRY KARNOWSKY GALLERY, 170 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90036 (323) 933-4408
Inquiries contact: mkgallery@att.net or contact@kentwilliams.com
Gallery: mkgallery.com

What is becoming of the ‘us’ – the ‘each of us’? Where will all of our technology leave us?

Maybe it’s our detachment from the reality of mass human destruction, or the invited dehumanization of our existence through computers and online interactions. It could be our growing desensitization to cruelty, to violence and to suffering through the television invasion. Whatever it is, it appears we have stopped celebrating, or even acknowledging, the very thing that defines our entire race – our humanity. We are offering it up, as though sacrificially, to the machines we create and worship.

Because of this almost inevitable crisis of self, we find it important again, maybe now more than ever in the history of art making, to cling to our most basic possession – the human form. Call it a quiet revolution – the lone artist embracing the representation of man again – slowly and deliberately turning himself back around to look at himself again. Through the idiosyncratic self, the artists in this show collectively identify the masses: the every man, the other men, the always woman and the sometimes child – their existences, their truths, their triumphs and their failures. These artists remind us that we, the family of man, must not allow ourselves to disappear.

This selected small, though strong group of artists is just a sampling of those who reflect the value that is being put back on the human form. These are artists who reach again to cling to the arms, to the legs and to the hearts of humankind for inspiration, and in doing so, remind us of what we are – the good and the bad – the beautiful restfulness and the harrowing despair.

Not a school or a group or a movement in the –ism sense, these artists are as different at times as they are similar, investigating mankind through courageous and honest contemplation. Bringing to the show painting, sculpture and photography, the aforementioned artists welcome us back to our basic needs and realities.