The Hole Presents: Misaki Kawai and Jonathan Chapline

October 11 - November 11, 2018 OPENING: Thursday, October 11th from 6-9pm

MISAKI KAWAI PINE CONE TIMES

The Hole is proud to announce our third solo exhibition by Misaki Kawai "Pine Cone Times." Two Octobers ago she brought us "Cave Life" painting the entire gallery yellow with black cave paintings and animal furniture CHECK IT OUT and three years before that we got a giant black combable dog sculpture and fluffy pink paintings (and combs!) for "Hair Show" see that one HERE so boy, we are super excited for this year's October Misaki surprise. Apparently this October it is pine cone time! From her home base in Osaka, Japan, Kawai traveled to Vermont where she and her family lived and worked this September to make the show. "Pinecone Pond" which included a big barn and meandering river was the setting for the creation of these paintings. Made with acrylic paint and river water, all artworks were created al fresco and occasionally enjoyed the support of Kawai's 3-year-old daughter Poko. These new paintings are what Misaki calls "sloppy style" or the hasty, brushy improvisational style that she has implemented many times in her career. It captures her inventiveness and sense of humour that is an intrinsic part of "Heta-Uma" or "Good/Bad" style of artmaking that developed in Japan. Faces are so wrong they are right, the flower pot is so misshapen that it is perfect, the dog's face is deformed but evocative. That is the approach of Heta-Uma and here we find both misshapen dogs and cats, girls and boys, flowers and footwear. With a no-comment black background in every piece, the oddities themselves are presented straightforwardly. She isn't making a scene, or an environment; her work is more deadpan symbolic like that of Donald Baechler or King Terry in Japan. It has been fifteen years since her amazing debut solo show in NYC at Clementine Gallery! Kawai has exhibited widely, in recent years mostly at institutions. She has had a solo show at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2007); a solo show at one of Japan’s leading private institutions, Watari Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2006); she was included in “Greater New York 2″ at PS1 Contemporary art center, New York (2005); “Fun” at Rhiimaki Art Museum Finland (2012); and presented solo museum exhibitions at Malmo Konsthall (2012) and at the Children’s Museum of Art in New York City (2012) . Major works in the MOCA Los Angeles and the Watermill Center NY have garnered attention in 2015 and 2016. In 2009 she was included in “Visions of the Frontier” at Institut Valencia d’Art Modern and “I Believe: Japanese Contemporary Art” at the Museum or Modern Art, Toyama. She has recently exhibited with V1 Gallery in Copenhagen and Loyal Gallery in Sweden, as well as Take Ninagawa in Tokyo; a recent exhibition and solo booth at NADA with Eric Firestone garnered a lot of attention as well last year. This year she presented solo exhibitions at Avenue Art Hall, Seoul and Lotte Gallery in Busan. She lives and works in Osaka when not traveling extensively.

JONATHAN CHAPLINE MATERIAL MEMORY October 11 - November 11, 2018 OPENING: Thursday, October 11th from 6-9pm The Hole is proud to announce our first solo exhibition by Jonathan Chapline of painting and sculpture. A standout in our group show "Post Analog Painting II" last year, Chapline went on to have amazing works with us in art fairs around the world, so it is at long last we are happy to finally present a full exhibition of these fascinating works. The digital aesthetics in the paintings had us eagerly add him to "Post Analog Painting II" and the cover of the catalogue. Like Avery Singer and many other young artists Chapline uses 3D programs to sketch out and render artworks in ways previously impossible. The style of the program lends itself to arranging slabs in space and then sorta pulling them out into thickness and volume; the light function allows you to shine digital light across the surfaces you have made to see mathematically how it would bend and reflect. If Chapline just made digital prints they would be captivating; however, happily he synthesizes the sketches to carefully paint the image in acrylic and flashe on panel. Flashe is a vinyl-based paint invented in the 50s that has an opaque and velvety matte feel to the surface, like tempera. Each polygon of color is taped off and painted, with a cutting edge, neon underpainting and handmade imperfection he learned from apprenticing with painter Jules de Balincourt. His use of color and more pop sensibility you might see from his years apprenticing for the artist KAWS thereafter. The digital sketching and carefully constructed application get you through the how-it-was-made bit; however, the content of the works and their compositional and color choices help us get to the why. All ten new paintings in the show are horizontal; architecturally-interesting domestic interiors, still lifes, bathers. And each feels like an HD panoramic-ratio movie still. Light in the paintings seems to be the protagonist as it wraps around the faceted forms and pools in colorful shadows, while the occasional knife or power drill or broken bottle adds a hint of threat. The one sculpture in the show is a curious extract of the paintings: both figures and figurines appear in the paintings, and it is unclear whether this sculpture is a sculpture of a sculpture. It certainly looks to reference Henri Matisse, so perhaps it is a 3D rendering of a 2D collage work from the Post-Impressionist master. The title "Digital Artifact" suggests that this form is based on a 3D program misreading or messing up the translation of the original cutout, and adds a new layer to our interpretation of the exhibition; perhaps it is more in the slippages than the successes in his use of technology that the artist finds inspiration.