Klaus Gallery is excited to open its fall season with a solo show of new paintings by Alex Dodge, opening September 8. Dodge will debut a group of oil paintings building upon his interest in recent computing advances, and the ways in which technologies evolve and shape life in the anthropocene.
The show includes a suite of paintings depicting patchwork-skinned humanoids lounging in various states of contemplation, including several portraying figures on the beach. The paintings look to historical antecedents like Manet’s Olympia or Cezanne and Picasso’s bathers, picturing a leisure setting infused with a subtext of class. A number of works display impish “daemons” casting magical spells, offering a unique take on the concept of artificial intelligence presented in the guise of 1980s cartoons. A tondo of gleeful, star-embellished pillowy lettering that reads “Circling the Drain, Racing to the Bottom” hovers and looms in the show. Other text-based works take the form of graphic t-shirts, featuring phrases like “Blood in the Water” and “Tabula Rasa.” These paintings engage with the notion of personhood and projections of selfhood in various forms. As a group, Dodge’s paintings explore how technologies mine, mimic, and threaten the idea of our own humanity, examining the potentials and failings of our own inventions.
Alex Dodge lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and Takao, Japan. He holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and a MPS from New York University. In addition to multiple solo exhibitions at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery since 2006, recent solo exhibitions include BB&M Gallery in Seoul, South Korea (2023); Maki Fine Arts in Tokyo, Japan (2021); The Faro Collection in Tokyo, Japan (2021); and Halsey McKay Gallery in East Hampton, NY (2021). He has had work in group shows at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Columbus Museum of Art in Columbus, Ohio; the Fleming Museum of Art in Burlington, Vermont; The Spencer Museum of Art in Lawrence, Kansas; The Bucksbaum Center for the Arts at Grinnell College in Iowa; Miles McEnery Gallery in New York; Mitsukoshi Contemporary, Tokyo, Japan; Woaw Gallery in Hong Kong; the IPCNY in New York; and James Cohan Gallery, New York. His work is held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of Art, New York; the MFA Boston; the Pizzuti Collection at the Columbus Museum of Art; The New York Public Library; the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY; Jundt Art Museum, WA; RISD Museum, Providence, RI; Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford University, CA; Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, KS.
