May 31 – June 1, 2014

Opening Reception: May 31, 2014, 12 - 2 PM 

Hours: Saturday & Sunday from 12 - 7 PM

Location: 

56 Bogart Street, #4G

Key Projects is pleased to present Keyed Up In Bushwick, an exhibition featuring work by Vincent Como, Sara Russell Dewey, Steve Karlik and Alex Paik. Keyed Up in Bushwick brings together multiple dualities, which coexist peacefully or confidently between the artists’ works: weightless and heavy, airy and solid, sturdy and soft, small and large, monochrome and multicolored, monumental and modest, abstract and conceptual.

Working with the precedents of the monochrome painting, Vincent Como deliberately obstructs the surfaces of his paintings by stacking, burning or collapsing his pristine work, resulting in unfulfilled potential or future potential. Sara Russell Dewey’s small-scale glazed ceramics seem dense and solid belying their true lightness. The tension created by the angling and tilting of Steve Karlik’s metal paintings teeter on weightlessness and flight. Alex Paik’s colorful, multipart geometric constructions are repeated, turned inside out, around and reversed to create larger complex structures. 

Vincent Como (b. 1975, Kittanning, PA; lives in Brookyn, NY) works in a broad array of media, including installation, painting, printmaking, and artist books. The subject of his artistic practice is the color black, which he describes as “the pure and unrepentant mark of information…both the origin of recording thoughts and the fully saturated realization of all pigment as one”. His work draws on ideas from art history, color theory, philosophy, physics, alchemy, heavy metal, religion, and mythology. Como has exhibited his work throughout the United States, including in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois, Utah, and California, among others. He holds a BFA in Drawing from the Cleveland Institute of Art.

Sara Russell Dewey grew up in Oregon where she was a slow walker and liked to stoop down and discover stuff - like rocks and moss and such.  She moved to New York, by way of San Francisco, to attend graduate school at Pratt Institute. While studying painting at Pratt, she rediscovered ceramics and began making thimble-sized works that creep their way into their environments.  She is interested in tipping the scales of the monumental by using the minimal.  Russell Dewey has shown in New York, Chicago and Boston and maintains a studio in Brooklyn, NY.

Steve Karlik is an abstract painter originally from Portland, Oregon. His work has been shown in Asia, Europe, the US and South America. Solo exhibitions include New York and Rio de Janeiro, with select group exhibitions in Australia, Berlin, Brussels, Italy, New York and Philadelphia. His work has been reviewed by Time Out New York, Il Lunedi de Republica in Italy, Art Net, The Philadelphia Enquirer, The Philadelphia Downtown ledger and by O-Globo and the Jornal O Dia in Rio de Janeiro Brazil. Karlik has a Master of Fine Arts degree in Painting from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn NY, and currently resides in Brooklyn, NY.

Alex Paik was born in 1981 in Oxnard, California and currently lives and works in Brooklyn.  His work has been exhibited recently at Millsaps College, Space 4 Art: San Diego, Nancy Margolis Gallery, and Parallel Art Space. Recent solo shows include Paper Constructs at Guest Spot @ The Reinstitute, Recapitulation Bop at Gallery Joe, Start to Move at Tiger Strikes Asteroid Philadelphia, and Polyphonic Improvisation at U Turn Art Space.  Paik’s work has been in several art fairs, including Drawing Now: Paris, Pulse:New York and Miami, artMRKT San Francisco, and Texas Contemporary. He is currently represented by Gallery Joe in Philadelphia and is the director of Tiger Strikes Asteroid New York, an artist-run exhibition space in Bushwick.