Details:
① Artwork:
Like a Song Playing Over and Over
This painting depicts a vanity mirror in the dressing room, a place designated for rest that can also function as a trap. This composition is part of a diverse body of work by the artist that explores ways of seeing and being seen. The series is steeped in uncanny, dramaturgic tropes from stylized razzle-dazzle stage productions: the harlequin, the vanity mirror, the curtain, the clown and the mask. The artist employs this existential iconography to question the ways in which masks, or mascs, impact the freedom and farce of daily performance.
Alex Kerr uses a variety of media—including oil, acrylic sheets, ceramic and wood—to build dizzying technicolor worlds where he can hide, either in reality or just for pretend. The artist uses repetition, redundancy and disquieting color and pattern to depict uncomfortable or embarrassing scenes that would be otherwise light-hearted. This work is a distorted fun house that veils the artist’s darkest inquiries into authentic selfhood and idiosyncratic queer identity.
Specs:
③ Artist:
Alex Kerr’s work depicts blithe scenes turned uncomfortable, distorted fun houses that examine authentic selfhood and queer identity. The artist builds dizzying, technicolor worlds using repetition and disquieting color and pattern—as well a variety of media, including oil, acrylic sheets, ceramic and wood. Kerr’s compositions employ the iconography of a stylized version of razzle-dazzle stage productions to pose important questions about freedom and the farce of daily performance, including: is there truth at the bottom of the lie?
BIO:
Alex Kerr was born in 1989.
Solo exhibitions of Kerr’s work have taken place at: the University of California, Los Angeles (2022); Mint in Atlanta, Georgia (2018); the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center in Atlanta, Georgia (2018); and The Blue House in Dayton, Ohio (2016).
Group exhibitions that have included Kerr’s work have taken place at: Lump Gallery in Raleigh, North Carolina (2019); Camayuhs in Atlanta, Georgia (2018); the Mason-Scharfenstein Museum of Art in Demorest, Georgia (2018); and Hathaway Contemporary in Atlanta, Georgia (2017).
Kerr lives and works in Los Angeles, California.