Exhibition

Kevin Ford. Soft Ghosts

12 Mar 2020 – 25 Apr 2020

Regular hours

Thursday
11:00 – 18:00
Friday
11:00 – 18:00
Saturday
11:00 – 18:00
Tuesday
11:00 – 18:00
Wednesday
11:00 – 18:00

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Kevin Ford’s first exhibition at Kate Werble, Soft Ghosts, introduces a group of paintings that depict blurred objects set against monochromatic backdrops.

About

Ford’s works have a quick appeal with their vibrant Day-Glo colors and visually elusive images of notebooks, outlets, vases, and fingers, but the immediate satisfaction of recognition dissipates without further pictorial details. In this way, the exhibition acts as a visual catalogue of obscured objects, collecting the perception of things without revealing the thing itself.

Ford’s paintings are an economical combination of delicate brushwork and loose airbrushing. The spray gun sends an atomized acrylic paint cloud that shifts from gas to liquid on the surface of the painting, capturing the fluid flux of movement and memorializing it. There is painting over, wiping out, and addition, leaving a sense that something is hidden beneath the matte surface.

The rapid circulation of images in our digital era flattens meaning. A meme on the internet occupies the same space as an image of an historical painting, an official government declaration, or a news headline. Similarly, Ford’s paintings give equal weight to the humble and the grand while highlighting the tension between documentation and illegibility. The works together are a cluster of “afterimages,” the snapshots that remain in one’s retina after the thing itself goes away.

Soft Ghosts reveals a very real distinction between clarity and reality, reinforcing how to look at a painting, and why it’s worth looking at all. Perhaps an age-old idea holds true: part of seeing is actually not seeing.

Exhibiting artistsToggle

Kevin Ford

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