C.K. Wilde
Well known for his collages and handmade books, C.K. Wilde presents his 3rd exhibition with Rosamund Felsen Gallery at the gallery’s new Downtown Los Angeles location.
Gallant in their splendor and poignant in their candor, the paintings, sculptures and collages range in subject matter from majestic horses and myths of fallen heroes to historical exploits in foreign lands. Bottlecap covered sculptures, currency rearranged into collages of Greek figures, maps layered around depictions of political leaders, a rotating antler capped bronze figure and coins providing armor on various forms all come together in the lastest exhibition titled Temper.
Echoes of tragedy, disappointment & compassion reverberate beneath the surface of these works, questioning the limitations of value and the worth of commerce. Made up of appropriated symbols of oppression, expansion, and subjugation - the ephemera, maps and currency have been meticulously & beautifully reconfigured into bold collages & sculptures that longingly express notions of freedom, journey & adventure.
Materiality, weight & texture are explored, as the deconstruction & recontextualizing of the materials grant Wilde freedom to transform symbols of power, greed, and colony into objects of cautious storytelling and critique. The discards of the past are unearthed and thus repurposed in new ways and in new contexts. Here, eruditions and explorations give way for a future based on human understanding and compassion.
C.K. Wilde has works in collections of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Egypt; Boston Athenaeum; Houghton Art Library, Harvard University; Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Minneapolis Museum of Art; Clark Library, UCLA; University of California, Santa Barbara; SFMOMA; Walker Art Center, Minnesota; and Victoria + Albert Museum Library, London. He has also exhibited internationally in Frankfurt, Beijing, London and Paris.