NEW YORK, NY.- Drawn Curtains is a solo exhibition of artworks by mepaintsme, the pseudonym for the artist and curator whose personal and often dark imagery evokes the existential fears and anxieties associated with mortality, technology, and the unknown.
Working primarily with pencil on aged surfaces culled from book covers, end papers, catalogs and coloring books, the artist creates visual epitaphs from vestiges of a dying media, signaling our increasing disassociation with the physical world via developing technology. The artist states, “I’m interested in exploring both reasonable and unreasonable fears, and how they affect our collective psyche.”
Alongside the fourteen artworks presented in Drawn Curtains is an ongoing series titled Vatis Species whose Latin to English translation is Phantoms of Quality. In this series of portraits, the artist presents a grouping of ghosts from a bygone era, when the use of the hand had yet to be replaced by the computer. Drawn on antique notebook papers, book covers and stamp-saver booklets, each of the thirty-nine portraits are mounted to postcards, and presented in a format akin to trading cards.
Mepaintsme remains anonymous, living and working in the United States. He received a BFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art and attended artist residencies at AICAD, New York Studio Residency Program (New York, NY) and the Santa Fe Masters Program (Santa Fe, NM). For the past 30 years, he has worked as an illustrator and painter. He currently runs the online gallery MEPAINTSME with his partner, and is the sole curator behind the @mepaintsme Instagram account.
Disparate Visions
Alexandra Duprez, Robert Kraiss, Alex Kvares, & Gosia Machon
March 22 - April 21, 2024
Disparate Visions, a group exhibition organized by mepaintsme, features works on paper by MEPAINTSME gallery artists Alexandra Duprez, Robert Kraiss, Alex Kvares and Goshia Machon.
Alexandra Duprez (b. 1974, Quimper, France) lives and works in Douarnenez, France.
In her drawings, paintings and collages, the human form is sensitively interpreted using a balance of abstraction and symbolic gesture. Shaped from her early encounters with Aboriginal art, Duprez silhouettes the human form and intermingles mystical elements of various orders: limbs, snakes, and waves of energy. These concurrences of iconography point us toward a spiritual energy entangled with the unconscious. The artist is represented by Galerie DYS in Brussels, HAGD Contemporary in Denmark, C.O.A. Galerie in Montreal, and MEPAINTSME in the United States.
Robert Kraiss (b. 1972, Bonn, Germany) lives and works in Cologne, Germany. He studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy with Georg Herold (master class student) and Oswald Wiener from 2000-2006. His work has been featured in exhibitions across Europe, including solo exhibitions at Tobias Hantmann Studio, Berlin; Norbert Arns Gallery, Cologne; Desaga Gallery, Cologne; and Kilchmann Gallery, Zürich, Switzerland. Kraiss has been awarded grants by the Stiftung Kunstfonds Foundation, the Rheinlande and Westfalen Art Association, and the Friends of Düsseldorf Art Academy. He frequently lectures on experimental drawing and recently completed a substitute professorship at the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design, Halle Germany.
Alex Kvares [b. 1975 Kyiv, Ukraine (at the time Kiev, USSR)] lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. In 1990, the Kvares family left the Soviet Union and relocated to Kansas City, in the United States. After dropping out of high school, Kvares earned a BFA from the University of Kansas and MFA from the University of Texas in Austin. He spent a decade making art in Atlanta before moving to New York City to teach at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. His work has been exhibited at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia; Josee Bienvenu Gallery and Mulherin + Pollard in New York; Steven Zevitas Gallery and Judi Rotenburg in Boston; the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis; the Minsk Museum of Modern Art in Belarus; and the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in North Carolina. His work has also been included in several issues of New American Paintings.
Gosia Machon (b. 1979, Poland) lives and works in Hamburg, Germany. Machon graduated from HAW Hamburg (Department Design) in 2008. She has since exhibited her work and projects internationally at galleries and art institutions in Berlin, Paris, Antwerp, Warsaw, Istanbul, Vienna, Tel Aviv, and Kyoto. Her recent exhibitions include Nominees at Kunsthaus, Hamburg 2023; A room for one's own at Clint Roehnisch Gallery, Toronto, 2022; Lieb Lieb Leid Lied at HilbertRaum, Berlin, 2021; and Durch das Getümmel at Kunstverein Ellwangen, 2020. She is a lecturer for drawing and painting at German art schools, including HAW Hamburg and Burg Giebichtenstein Kunstchochschule Halle; and the recipient of art awards and grants, most recently the Hamburg Grant for Contemporary Art, Ministry of Culture and Media 2023; and the Heitland Honneur Celle 2023.
