Brand New Gallery is pleased to present Fatal Dad, a two-person exhibition featuring a new installation of works by Brian Kokoska with sculptures by Zack Davis.

For this presentation, Kokoska has altered the gallery in shades of baby purple and incorporated Davis’ sensitive, achromic sculptures that are both bodily and diagrammatic in their exploration of space and form. Davis’ works press into the carpeted floor surrounded by purple, a non-spectral color that demands psychophysical efforts in the human brain to differentiate from violet.

Kokoska’s new paintings and installation are also based in purple, violet and black. The works explore sensibilities of the post-human image and uncanny valley, often demonstrating a language of their own through reoccurring ritualistic text, numbers and symbols. Simplified iconography such as stars, flowers, teardrops and spiderwebs perpetuate the allusive and gestural faces found in Kokoska’s painting and sculpture. Spiderwebs also appear in Davis’ work, in this case literally captured by the artist.

Fatal Dad marks both artists’ first exhibition with the gallery and in Italy.

 

Brian Kokoska

(b. 1988, Vancouver, Canada) is an artist based in New York. He graduated with a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2010. Recent solo exhibitions include American Medium (Brooklyn), Ohmydays (Singapore), East Hampton Shed (East Hampton), LVL3 (Chicago) and Preteen Gallery (Mexico).

Upcoming exhibitions include Smart Objects (Los Angeles), Nichelle Beauchene (New York), Chez Valentin (Paris), LOYAL (Stockholm), Johannes Vogt (New York), and David Castillo (Miami). His works are part of various private collections internationally, and have been exhibited throughout the United States, Canada, and abroad. His work has been featured in Art Papers, artUS, V Magazine, The New York Times, Canadian Art, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Artforum, Vogue and Art in America.

 

Zack Davis

(b. 1985) is an artist and curator living in New York City. Using a diverse range of materials and techniques, his work explores the formal, material, and affective qualities of thought in its interplay with the nonhuman world. He has recently shown at Important Projects and American Medium, and in September of 2014 was an artist in residence at Real Time and Space in Oakland, California. He is one of the founders of Appendix Project Space, an exhibition space that operated in Portland, Oregon from 2008-2013.