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Kinderhook, New York [January 22, 2024] — Bill Arning Exhibitions is pleased to present Familiar/Unfamiliar, a group exhibition of works by Kevin Mosca, Matthew Bede Murphy, Sue Muskat, and Erik Daniel White, all artists who use iconography and images that are or seem familiar in unfamiliar ways. The exhibition explores the idea that subversions of familiar images from popular culture, advertising, visual art, and everyday life can penetrate the consciousness of viewers in a uniquely deep way.
Encountering any mundane image can provoke the question, “Have I seen this before?” or “Do I know what this is?” Realizing that one has or does can sometimes bring about a feeling of comfort in the viewer. Yet that feeling of calm can be short-lived if a viewer realizes that something in the image feels off. Closer inspection can reveal anomalies or slight alterations, prompting a doubling-back moment in which we ask, “What is that?” Such an experience allows one to consider both the altered image and the image as we remember it with more intentional inspection.
The artists in Familiar/Unfamiliar all strive to effect this response in viewers. In his hyperrealistic paintings, Kevin Mosca employs the iconography of the milkman, a profession that no longer exists in America but that permeated 20th century Americana ranging from 1960s TV shows to 1970s porn. Painter, printmaker, and sketcher Matthew Bede Murphy creates images of tawdry and compelling tales of erotic adventures that present as if they had been sourced from imagined queer telenovelas. In a series of playful, existential paintings, Sue Muskat sources familiar characters from animation and children’s books, and complicates them with philosophically self-reflexive captions. Erik Daniel White, in his image-sculptures, creates distorted representations of familiar quotidian scenes, like catching sight of a stranger’s flower arrangement through their window. Through their subversions of the familiar, these four artists strive to make viewers hyperaware of thinking and behavior that often goes unexamined.
The work of the Pictures Generation group in the 1970s and 1980s, whose critical engagement with over-production of images seemed complex at that time, now seems like an innocent age of multiplying but still simple advertisements and movie stills. In Familiar/Unfamiliar, Mosca, Murphy, Muscat, and White seek to remind viewers that the existential challenge of understanding how we see, process, and comprehend an image is ever more crucial in an age when pictures are presented to all from every possible direction.
About Bill Arning Exhibitions
Bill Arning Exhibitions (BAE), established in 2019, is a contemporary art gallery located in New York’s Hudson Valley dedicated to presenting challenging and thought-provoking work. With a focus on emerging and mid-career artists, BAE’s program fosters a stimulating dialogue between the universal desire to challenge convention and meaningful engagement with art history. Led by veteran curator Bill Arning, BAE continues his legacy of championing artists who push boundaries and expand the definition of art. For more information, visit www.billarning.com.
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