FANZINE

Note: we meant to get something done on this show before it goes down, but alas it’s going down today.  Anyway, if you are out and about tonight, hop into the Hudson’s always challenging, most often delightful Feature Inc. gallery across from the New Museum on Bowery in NYC.

Kinke Kooi, Let Me Comfort You

Kinke Kooi’s drawings possess a quality that is at once visceral and transcendent, filling the page with delicately textured lines that give way to voluminous forms. Her show at Feature Inc. consists of drawings and paintings, the mediums coupled together on most of the pieces. Kooi also often paints on photographs, which gives her work a lovely layered quality as her brush strokes collide the smooth surface of the photos. The images vary from drawings of octopuses to orifices, strands of pearls and curling braids of hair appearing in nearly all of her pieces. Kooi’s drawing style is awe-inspiring, each piece endowed with an overwhelming sense of tenderness as she explores femininity. Her images are cuddled together on each canvas, bubbling volume expanding to fill each space and seems poised to burst off the surface. Each painting deserves a careful look up close, as the gorgeous quality of her lines and small, barely noticeable elements, like tiny writing on the bottom of one drawing, are what makes her work so wonderful.  The show is small and intimate, which works perfectly with Kooi’s aesthetic and reflects the deeply personal sense one gets from her images. It ends on April 25th, so get yourself over there before it goes down!

*Image above is “I am a Believer” (2008). For further information and images, please read the excellent interview with Kinke Kooi on Feature’s site: http://www.featureinc.com.