The Reaping: Klaus Enrique, NYC

Rebecca Hossack Gallery NYC is proud to present Klaus Enrique: The Reaping, a solo show featuring works by New York based artist Klaus Enrique. A series of photographic portraits, Enrique's creations complicate and investigate notions of the ephemeral. Utilizing materials such as fruits, vegetables, flowers, and animal remains, Enrique produces glorious human forms and captures them in a rare moment of ripeness, preserving the perfection that precedes inevitable decay. Enrique breathes new life into these forms, harvesting, reaping, and reconfiguring them as beautiful, often dark portraits.

Enrique's work finds a foundation in the 16^th century paintings of Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Using Arcimboldo's work as a platform from which to build, Enrique adopts the painstaking task of recreating his imaginative portraits, whose beauty rest on the placement of a perfectly shaped pear, flower, or tree root.

While Arcimboldo studied his subjects through the medium of paint, Enrique mechanically captures his subjects in real time before they cease to be viable. Because of this, the surrealistic quality of Enrique's work is juxtaposed with an important quality of realism, bringing to the forefront both the transitory nature of life, and the richness of a captured moment.

"Painting has the inalienable ability to create a fantasy completely removed from reality," said Enrique. "Photography arguably lacks that trait, but in return it provides a picture of reality that the most consummate photorealist can hardly match. This series brings a fantasy back to life."

Pushing beyond the realm of Arcimboldo's scope, Enrique's work has moved into the arena of contemporary visual culture through his reinterpretations of icons like Darth Vader, Princess Diana, and Ghandi. This has dramatically propelled Enrique's work into the modern age, exploring new domains of darkness and nostalgia. The result is a body of work which exceeds the sum of its parts and speaks to the immense potential of living things.