New Image Art is pleased to present, Communion, a solo exhibition of photographic work by Los Angeles-based artist, Clifford Prince King, opening Saturday, September 14th, 2019 from 7-10 PM.
Communion is seen as the gentle placement of beings in embrace. Soft moments of refuge and uninhibited intimacy. A hand held in the car, a hand resting on the waist, a hand curved around the nape of a neck. In communion there is an unspoken protection.
Layered within the images are nods to the beyond. Shared offerings to the past manifest in codes hidden in plain sight, known only to those who sit within a shared place of knowledge. A poster hanging in the foreground, wigs on a dresser, small stacks of books with their spines just visible; a collection of items that signify here blackness resides. In these instances, communion begins to morph into an offering of memory; it is how King honors the soft and layered physicality of time.
In the act of creating offerings, King illustrates how communion can also make alters of beings. People are not displayed but shown an earnest, clarified sense of personhood. Through communion, one garners the precedence of value simply by existing.
Shared space, bodies, and iconography prioritize what it means to be seen and tended to in ways that move within and beyond the physical. Portraiture becomes prose. The act of seeing and being seen in the practice of communion reminds us that one is never truly alone.
-Text by Sydney Haliburton
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
New Image Art is pleased to present the West Coast debut of Kat Lyons inaugural solo exhibition, Memory of a Monolith, opening Saturday, September 14th, 2019 from 7-10 PM. As her first solo exhibition Lyon’s builds a body of work that reimagines a world free from human dominance, where coevolution is an act of preservation and salvation.
Memory of a Monolith refers to the current state of the planet’s distress. Much like our planet, a monolith signifies strength and wisdom that can only be learned through age. They at times feel defenseless in the battle against human sovereignty, acting to us, as a seemingly stagnant onlookers with bestowed sentience through the gift of memory.
