NEW YORK, NY.- Miles McEnery Gallery announced representation of Karel Funk.

Though Funk’s portraits have all the drama of Renaissance paintings, they are not theatrical—the subject does not acknowledge the viewer, nor do they perform for us. Instead, they are transfixed, their gaze drawn to something beyond our reach, unaware of their own audience. The absence of a visible face doesn’t create distance but instead draws us closer; through their anonymity, they become projections of the viewer’s own emotions and narratives. The use of flat, monochromatic backgrounds further focus our attention on his exacting photorealistic details: seams pucker under their own pressure while minute wrinkles cast shadows like the topography of a craggy landscape. Funk’s figures dwell in the ambiguous space between the seen and unseen. Here, the familiar and ordinary—an isolated hood—takes on a haunting, sacred reverence.

Karel Funk (b. 1971 in Winnipeg, Canada) received his Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University, New York, NY and his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada.

Funk has been the subject of solo exhibitions at 303 Gallery, New York, NY; Blouin Division, Montréal, Canada; Jessica Silverman, San Francisco, CA; Monte Clark Gallery, Vancouver, Canada; Rochester Art Center, Rochester, MN; Stems Gallery, Brussels, Belgium; and was the subject of a major museum retrospective at Winnipeg Art Gallery, Winnipeg, Canada.

Recent group exhibitions have been held at the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; La Maison Rouge de Fondation Antoine de Galbert, Paris, France; Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, Montréal Canada; Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, Montréal, Canada; Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg, Canada; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, among others.

His work may be found in the collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, Montréal, Canada; Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, Montréal, Canada; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.

Funk lives and works in Winnipeg, Canada.