3/20/2023 0 Comments Osmos stamford nyKoskoska’s muted palette and gestural brushwork echo this feeling of unease, teetering between dread and calm. Elsewhere are equally placid, possibly fretful vignettes: a man peering out through crumpled window blinds two boys kneeling at a gravesite. They elicit North American traditions of hunting, frontier living, and the role of shooting skills as a rite of passage, while also implying harm and tragedy. The tension between the perceived purity of youth and guns’ potential for violence is simultaneously countered and heightened by the apparent quietude of these scenes, which appear to exist outside of time. Several works portray gleeful children comfortably carrying firearms, set against brushy, richly hued backdrops. The act of holding and being held becomes at once a tender, surreal, and comic display. These people seem desperately driven to commune with nature, but not necessarily adept at doing so. Shut-eyed and serene, grinning, brought to tears, or overcome with cute-aggression, their ecstatic expressions are made palpable through Kokoska’s severe stylization, and echoed through their hands with nimbly outstretched fingers clenching into fur and feathers. One series of portraits focuses on individuals while they tightly embrace animals in an emotional state. The tale functions as a platform on which to stage further open-ended narratives, incorporating fragments of nostalgia, childhood memories, and the artist’s own visual vocabulary.Īnonymous and often androgynous, Kokoska’s subjects are rendered as cartoonish figures sporting broad toothy smiles, wide eyes, and protruding chins. In alluding to this fable, Kokoska draws parallels between its themes of paranoia, grief, and loss of innocence, and the anxieties of war, disease, and alienation plaguing our present. ![]() In turn, he exacts revenge by playing his magical pipe once more, charming the local children to follow him into a cave, never to be seen again. After playing his tune and successfully luring the rats to drown in a nearby river, the piper is betrayed by the townspeople who renege on their agreement, refusing to pay. The exhibition’s title refers to The Pied Piper of Hamelin, a German folktale from the Middle Ages, wherein a colorfully garbed outsider strikes a deal to eliminate a town’s rat infestation for payment. SUNNY NY is pleased to present Who Killed the Pied Piper?, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Brian Kokoska.
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