Kris Kuksi: Beast Anthology, Opening Reception November 21, @ the Joshua Liner Gallery

Kris Kuksi: Beast Anthology
Joshua Liner Gallery is pleased to present Beast Anthology, an exhibition of new mixed-media works by the Kansas artist Kris Kuksi. This is Kuksi’s second solo show with the gallery.

Resonant with the times, Kuksi’s art contains both micro and macro dimensions. A scavenger of pop-cultural castoffs, Kuksi combines mass-produced “junk”—toy soldiers, plastic skulls, knick-knack figurines, and mechanical bits—into rococo tableaux. His intricate assemblages of small parts and large figures resolve into highly aestheticized totems with an air of neoclassicism. But unlike the idealistic fantasies depicted in art of the Belle Époque, Kuksi exposes the dark, crass, even mercenary underbelly of civilization.

The sculptural assemblages of Beast Anthology play broad riffs on a variety of morality themes. In The Temptation of St. Anthony, for example, the patron saint of lost and stolen articles is shown in a state of existential angst. Arrayed around this central figure are lost causes of every sort, from war-weary soldiers, to lost dogs and cows destined for the slaughterhouse, to detritus of obsolete technology. St. Anthony forms the towering pinnacle of this triangular composition; unable to intercede, he casts his doubt over the entire votive like the burnished pall of the work’s bronze-colored patina.