Guest Curated by Dan Cameron

Bert Green Fine Art is pleased to present a solo show by Chicago-based artist Kevin Blake, guest curated by Dan Cameron.

Kevin Blake grew up on the far south side of Chicago, and while young bore witness to the unique fraternity of white male power that was the Chicago Police Department, where his father and grandfather both enjoyed long careers, while forbidding him to follow in their footsteps. Instead, he studied painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he was inspired by its emphasis on art that reflects the specific paradoxes of one’s time and place. Thus incentivized to investigate subject matter close to home, Blake began the challenging process of minutely examining the psychological and cultural effects of toxic masculinity left over from his personal history and presumed cultural identity, to see how they might be reassembled into something more redemptive. 

The poignant results of Blake’s intensive cross-examination of (mostly) male identity can be seen in “Sundowning,” a word that typically refers to the dramatic mood shifts experienced by Alzheimer’s patients when daylight ends. Its use here is metaphorical, a reference to the crumbling of certain longstanding myths about what male roles are appropriate in today’s increasingly pluralistic society. If what first strikes one about Blake’s work is his impressive level of skill and creativity, that technical aspect is soon overtaken by our gradual discovery that the characters he depicts so unerringly can evoke our capacity to empathize with their suffering, no matter how unappetizing they first appear.

In Blake’s compositions, the male of the species is typically portrayed performing a social role fully in accord with societal expectations, only something isn’t going the way it should. A round of golf is swept away by a typhoon, a poolside reverie is harshly interrupted, a gym bro grimaces in our direction: while his subjects aspire to maintain their male privilege in the material world, Blake invites us to see through the bravado, and perceive them within a framework of near-desperate social isolation, worsened by their inability to drop their deeply ingrained roles. — Dan Cameron

All gallery events are free and open to the public. Additional information found at the gallery website at https://bgfa.us

A Third Degree Witness, Graphite, oil pastel, oil paint, and collage on paper mounted on canvas, 29.5 x 21", 2024