303 Gallery is proud to present our third exhibition of paintings by Karel Funk.
For his latest body of work, Funk continues his progressive abandonment of the narrative of realist portrait painting. As his subjects become further enshrouded in the contours of their synthetic overgarments, they become channels for the amorphous color fields, shadow and light interplay that is typical of Flemish and renaissance painting. Funk’s practice, however, with its daedal focus on minutiae, creates in each hyper-real detail an abstracted element of a larger, extrinsic level of consciousness.
The paintings are generally larger than life-size, rendering them disorienting in their overwhelming reality. Each subject is portrayed against a stark white background, typical of Funk’s work, and befitting of his dry, taxonomic approach. They face away, revealing little to none of their facial features. If any features are revealed, the subjects are androgynous, as the identity conventionally associated with portraiture is completely stripped away. The crevices and folds of the hoods and jackets begin to appear as worlds within themselves. In “Untitled #42,” the frame is subsumed by a glaringly red hood, with the barest whimper of a fur lining at its very edge. Suggesting sea and shore, or grass peeking over a hill, the interplay of light and form begins to resemble the abstraction of a topographic map. Despite his sitters’ contemporary attire, an austere ancientness permeates each piece - simultanously relics of a time we are not a part of and a pitch-perfect mirror of our everyday lives.
Karel Funk has had recent solo exhibitions at the Rochester Art Center and the Musee d'Art Contemporain de Montreal. The artist was included in “All the More Real” curated by Merrill Falkenberg and Eric Fischl at the Parrish Art Museum, in Southampton, NY, as well as “First We Take Museums” at the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki and “Superreal” curated by Lauri Firstenberg, an exhibition at the Prague Biennale and The Marella Arte Contemporanea in Milan, Italy. This is his third solo exhibition at 303 Gallery.