Keep Six Contemporary presents…
New Works by artists
Nick van Woert and Shawn Kuruneru

Dates: April 11-27, 2008

Friday April 11, 6-10pm
Opening reception

Location: Keep Six Contemporary: exhibition and project space (keep6c.com)
938 Bathurst Street, Toronto, Canada, M5R 3G5, 647 436 6594

About the exhibit:

Nick van Woert, is a 2007 graduate of Parsons MFA program and winner of the 2007 International Sculpture Center Student Award, creates sculptures that, like his impression of culture, result from “the pressure to produce, acquire and abandon consumable goods and information.” Shawn Kuruneru is a Montreal-based artist whose pen-on-paper drawings and collages combine elements of portraiture and landscape. Both artists are currently living in Brooklyn NY.

Nick and Shawn’s works both engage with contemporary culture while their processes suggest that surprise and beauty can emerge from a million repetitive movements. Nick’s sculptures begin with mass-produced pop culture in the form of plastic figurines of characters such as the Tin Man and Dorothy. These form the structured, symbolically-laden core of what will become an organic shape of vibrant colour. By dipping the figurines repeatedly into a bucket of paint, they emerge from the process looking like stalagmites, with their original form suggested by a pair of intact feet. While Nick starts out with a product that has been carefully planned, researched and focus-group tested, he subjects them to a mechanical treatment, ultimately unpredictable, pointless and without underlying logic.

Nick’s vibrant sculptures are contrasted by Shawn’s stark black-and-white drawings of iconic personalities and scenarios that are strangely juxtaposed. Shawn’s large-scale drawings are created from meticulous, careful execution with a ballpoint pen. The thousands of penstrokes eventually combine into an ordered image conjuring up associations with nature, pop culture,
experiences.