Endale Desalegn Exhibition
David Krut Projects
This event has ended.
David Krut Projects (DKP) presents a selection of richly layered experimental paintings by Ethiopian artist Endale Desalegn. For his first solo exhibition with David Krut Projects NYC, Endale interrogates ways in which capitalist structures mediate human dependencies on material objects – a relationship which he experiences to be fast spreading from the West into Ethiopian society. For Endale, who was born under the Derg – a Soviet-influenced communist period in recent Ethiopian history – “it is striking that the hammer and sickle universally represent communism, yet there is no one recognizable symbol for capitalism.” In this evocative body of work, the artist takes symbolic visual tropes, such as a baby’s milk bottle and a pacifier, to explore capitalist imagery and, in this vein, to draw connections between natural and constructed systems of dependence. Whereas the milk bottle represents the adult’s relationship to an ATM, the pacifier evokes methods of compensation used to sooth insatiable human desire, which is both enflamed and restrained under a capitalist system.
Media
Schedule
from April 21, 2016 to June 11, 2016
May 4 - 8, 2016: open by appointment only