Shawn Kuruneru: A White Hand Slowly Turning Green @ Ribordy Contemporary

Shawn Kuruneru: A White Hand Slowly Turning Green 
@ 
Ribordy Contemporary
Boulevard d'Yvoy 7b
CH - 1205 Geneva


Opening: June 21 from 6-9 PM

drawing is instinct
Instinct is nature
nature is shapes, dots and lines
repeated, flickering, disappearing,
twisted then, folding in upon itself
blossoming into new shapes.

One dot next to another
creates a black thread
into a blacker landscape,
hundreds of dots exploding out
tumbling endlessly through endless ink.
no longer certain where they end and begin.

drink in billions of actions.
the totality of the drawing,
observed from every point,
all in less time then it takes to draw a single breath.

Shawn Kuruneru's first solo exhibition in Europe, A White Hand Slowly Turning Green, takes its title from a sentence that describes nature consuming a man in the comic book The Saga of the Swamp Thing created by Len Wein and Berni Wrightson written by Alan Moore in 1987. 

The focus of the exhibition are three large scale comic panel collages made up of 27 drawings sourced from action comics such as X-MEN: the Phalanx, The Creech and AKIRA, are done in homage to influences on the artists' formative years. The selection of comic panels is akin to a reader who underlines sentences and quotes that resonates to him. The drawings are arranged to imitate a single comic page storyboard and meant to be read from left to right starting from the top. The result is a non-linear story that conveys a melodramatic rush of energy, angst and youth; with formal associations to Dada poster collages and Pop art gestures.

The abstract drawings in the show are done by hand using ink pens to make dots that cover large areas of the canvas. The works are highly detailed monochromatic abstract expressionist drawings that explore the nature of mark making. Kuruneru describes the works as: "...a way to understand the core of drawing. Drawing is about origins. When you have an idea in your head you extract it by writing, sketching and scribbling it out. The first mark making gesture comes from uncertainty and chance which is what I find most interesting and exciting in all art." The dot drawing series is entitled Virgin as way to discuss obsession with the unexplored while also insinuating a body-centric aspect to the work.