Emma Pryde “Counterplayer”

King's Leap

[Image: Emma Pryde "Split Analyst" (2021) Oil on panel in aluminum frame, 20 x 16 in.]

This event has ended.

King’s Leap presents the second solo exhibition of Emma Pryde in New York. Made in direct response to her recent materially driven sculptures, Pryde’s show foregrounds seven narrative oil paintings.

An excerpt from Coco Fitterman’s short book, published by Sapp Press and available at King’s Leap on the occasion of Counterplayer:

“…you needed to have come and try to withstand the situation; living and dying in a crevice with only a window to God and a painting to look at.

raw little spine of shadow, come into my house, feed the dogs, they don’t bite. here you are
a million things but one. I am nine doors. I shall open the one on which you knock.

have some sugar. mira que ojos tienes.

To call Emma’s paintings Surrealist would be incorrect. Calling them New Sacred might be closer to an approximation of a label.

I’m not so interested in naming.

Édouard Glissant said once that we understand the world better if we tremble with it.

What can I say about Emma’s paintings? Trust me that they are not what they seem, on the surface, to be. They are flat but not. Blue but not. Unnerving but not. In the negation of these descriptors they become something else. When there’s music playing, and you’re laying down, you’ll experience the sound differently depending on which ear is facing the ground. Of course, also, what the ground is made of. The paintings together create an ambiance that shifts with you, as the gaze of twenty-seven eyeless faces meets yours…”

Emma Pryde (b.1991, Ann Arbor, Michigan) is based in Madison, WI. Recent exhibitions include a solo presentation at Mickey Gallery (Chicago, IL), a two-person exhibition with Willard Klein at Alyssa Davis Gallery, (New York, NY), and a solo exhibition at Pretty Days (RI). Group exhibitions include Berlinskej Model (Prague), Hotel Art Pavilion (Brooklyn, NY), Material Fair (CDMX), Arturo Bandini (Los Angeles, CA), and Steve Turner (Los Angeles, CA). This is Pryde’s second solo exhibition with King’s Leap.