Join Kavi Gupta October 4th - 6th for Chicago Exhibition Weekend, Powered by Gertie and EXPO Chicago. Stop by Kavi Gupta Washington Blvd. between 4-7 pm on Friday October 4th for extended hours as we serve drinks and open Shimoyama's new solo presentation.
Extended hours take place on Friday evening of Chicago Exhibition Weekend, and features extended hours at over 50 galleries and creative spaces throughout the city of Chicago. No matter your background-whether you're an art aficionado or a newly minted collector-this is a great place to forge relationships with new galleries, artists and other collectors!
Kavi Gupta presents a solo exhibition featuring a selection of works from Devan Shimoyama’s visually scintillating practice.
Devan Shimoyama’s visually scintillating artworks stop people in their tracks. Clad in such finery as fur, feathers, glitter, rhinestones, and sequins, his paintings and sculptures emit a magical and joyous aura. Viewers easily enchanted by beautiful things might get lost in the shimmering artistry of Shimoyama’s expertly crafted cosmetic veils. Those whose eyes and minds are willing to travel beyond the surface subterfuge of glitter, flowers, and jewels gain precious entry into a complex world of mystery, introspection, rhapsody, and desire.
Shimoyama’s painting practice is rooted in explorations of his personal identity and experiences. Mobilizing mythology, spiritual traditions, and the compositional strategies of classical painters such as Francisco Goya and Caravaggio, he crafts heroic and sanguine depictions of the Black, queer, male body. Many of the men in Shimoyama's paintings literally have jewels in their eyes, endowing them with a tearful, mystified expression suggesting internal suffering.
Shimoyama has stated that he wants the figures in his work are perceived as "both desirable and desirous." He is aware of the politics of queer culture, and the ways in which those politics relate to Black American culture. These elements come together in his works in a way that is both celebratory and complicated.
Kavi Gupta presents a solo exhibition surveying the career of acclaimed artist and perceptual engineer Willie Cole.
Cole’s aesthetic position has long been associated with upcycling: the creative reuse of materials that might otherwise be destined for the junkyard. He has made artworks out of old clothes irons, vintage shoes, plastic water bottles, and, most recently, musical instruments.
But there is much more to Cole’s art than implied by a perfunctory analysis of his materials. Unlike so many other objets trouvés artists of the present and the past, whose ideas relate more to simple accumulation, combination, or anti-art sentiment, Cole’s work possesses an underlying humanity that shows he is part of something more profound than aesthetic, or even ecological, trends.
“I feel my work has spirit,” Cole says. “I’m creating art the same way the universe does. I use multiples of single objects. I’m taking a single cell and multiplying it. I work an object to the point where I’m gonna get one beat away from the living thing, and the art tells me when it's there.”
