Andrew Holmquist: ALTER EGO

To read CGN's 2016 interview with Holmquist, click here.

ALTER EGO is the gallery's fourth solo exhibition with Berlin-based gallery artist Andrew Holmquist. Holmquist's newest body of work is composed of two distinct but intertwined bodies of work: his Strong LQQks series of works on paper and ceramic sculptures. Presented in a dynamic installation, this exhibition examines the lengths to which the concept of figuration can be pushed, pulled, built and deconstructed.

Each individual work of art in ALTER EGO represents a fantastical character that serves as an extension of the artist's persona. The myriad of personalities may be considered as alter egos or super heroes projected through the guise of costuming, suits of armor, kinky fetish wear or any other realms of possibility. Placed in concert with each other, the cumulative effect of these drawings and sculptures both reveals and disguises the archetypes offered up for consideration by Holmquist. This installation is designed as a moment, frozen in time, that might exist between a chorus line and the front line of a battalion. The viewer's role then is to bear witness while participating in a ceremonial review of this cast of protagonists that may appear static, but who on further inspection are playful, experimental and improvisational.

ALTER EGO will include a continuation of Holmquist's long-running series Strong LQQks. These new drawings are presented in three seperate formats: extra large works on paper (6½ feet tall by 4½ feet wide), medium-sized drawings shown in two grids and a recently completed suite of ten, three-color lithographs in an edition of 18 and printed during November and December, 2017 at Keystone Editions in Berlin. The strength of these drawings is their depiction of mutability, moments of transformation and shifting shape. This is achieved by interweaving the tropes of figuration and abstraction while celebrating transforming bodies and gender ambiguity.