Eileen O’ Kane Kornreich: Pleasures of Duality | The Opening Gallery, New York

New York — The Opening Gallery is pleased to announce Pleasures of Duality, a solo exhibition of new and recent works by Eileen O’ Kane Kornreich on view from March 26-April 14, 2024.  Pleasures of Duality, including 8 recent canvases and 15 works on paper, unfolds as a captivating call to explore the fluidity of expression, form, and identity, and the fearless offering of flesh. Through her surrealist dreamscapes populated with nudes, beasts, dolls, and butterflies, the artist has created erotic windows into a universe where boundaries of expectation are shattered, allowing for expanded interpretations of human relationships. The exhibition opens with a reception on March 26, 6-8 p.m. An artist talk will be held on April 5 at 6 p.m. A closing reception will be held on April 14, 6-8 p.m.
 
The works in Pleasures of Duality traverse manifold methods of expression, narration, and abstraction, with textured surfaces created through the meticulous layering of material and meaning. O’Kane Kornreich’s process, marked by the interplay of form and history, reflects an unyielding inspiration and a relentless pursuit to discover new ways of presenting figure, line, and being. Rendering her complex mixed media works in an improvisational style with layers of oil paint alongside urgently scratched lines and colorful mists of spray paint, the artist layers her work with historic and popular references.
 
Pleasures of Duality begins first with the conscious creation of a relationship between artist and model that challenges traditional dynamics. O’Kane Kornreich’s sensuous figures freely and fearlessly offer their flesh, and her love for her subjects imbues their images with a power that runs past vulnerability into the arms of ease and expansiveness. The artist’s subversive approach reflects her quest to engage with a more fluid vision of self, one where the viewer might seek out and feel the swells and patterns of all that resides within.
 
Each work within Pleasures of Duality serves as an entry point into a rich, enigmatic universe, inviting viewers to ponder the myriad expressions of softness, safeness, and hybridity embodied and imagined. Housed within planes of color and instinctive line, queer and non-binary figures beckon welcomingly from the portals that O’Kane Kornreich unveils. Despite their bareness and variously prone positions, O’Kane Kornreich’s figures emanate a sense of substance and security. Commanding, contemplative, erotic, and ordinary, the people of O’Kane Kornreich’s worlds reflect the abundance of experience available to us all.
 
The notion of gaze is a central tool in O’Kane Kornreich’s narrative, serving as a means to interpret perceptions in terms of gender, sexual identity, and human relations. What do the floating cartoon characters see in the brazen figures? Where, towards future or fantasy, are her subjects looking? Who stirs beneath the surface, the doll, the lover, the fox, the lion, yearning to be made visible? It is not a conclusion but a beginning, an ever-expanding world flowing forth from a center of potential where princesses and monsters coexist, expressing ecstatic hybridity between fox tails and hidden figures.
 
“As we move through our world, we change it and are changed. I’ve been a different person several times over,” says O’Kane Kornreich. “Who will you be after passing time in this new world?”
 
About Eileen O’Kane Kornreich
Eileen O’Kane Kornreich (b. 1955, Stamford, CT) is a New York-based visual artist known for multi-medium paintings and drawings that traverse the boundaries of expression, narration, and abstraction. Among her forays into various disciplines of printmaking, she is realizing unique artist books that expand her storytelling while allowing the viewer intimate engagement with her art. For her Bridge 3 canvases she produced hand-built ceramic sculpture as part of that ongoing works of paintings and drawings. Recent exhibitions have included her 100-foot drawing performance during Warren Neidich’s Swept Away, Love Letter to a Surrogate(s), Guild Hall (East Hampton, NY), INFO BAHN Associate Artist Alumni Exhibition, Atlantic Center for the Arts (New Smyrna Beach, FL), Dumbo Open Studios (Brooklyn, NY) LongHouse Reserve (East Hampton, NY), Henry Klimowicz’s Together in Isolation at his The Re Institute (Millerton, NY) and Julie Keyes Galleries (Sag Harbor, NY, and Wellington, FL). She has been an artist in resident most recently at Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, FL, ChaNorth, Pine Plains, NY, The Watermill Center, Watermill, NY, and the School of Visual Arts, New York. The artist studied at the New York Studio School, Art Students League, and the School of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and is a member of White Columns Artist Registry.
 
About The Opening Gallery
The Opening Gallery, at 42 Walker in Tribeca, New York, is a nonprofit cultural venue and initiative established in 2022 by Sozita Goudouna, PhD, to showcase global and local artists, practice-based research, as well as performance, live events, and educational programs.
 
Exhibitions include visual and performing arts and music events, with monthly public programs spanning a wide range of topics.  The Opening Gallery has presented international and US based artists including Andres Serrano, Sagarika Sundaram, Michele Zalopany, Kenneth Goldsmith, John Zorn, The Shoplifter, Luciano Chessa, Daniel Firman, Hans Weigand, Raúl Cordero, Jessica Mitrani, United Nations artist-observer Yann Toma, Warren Neidich, Coleman Collins, Constance DeJong, Charles Gaines, Jimmie Durham, Leslie Hewitt, Jimmy Raskin, Agnieszka Kurant, Olu Oguibe, Martha Rosler, Allen Ruppersberg, Chrysanne Stathacos, Leah Singer, Ronan Day-Lewis, Orit Ben Shitrit, and Bill Hayward. In spring 2024 the gallery program will present a selection of Watermill Center former artists-in-residence including Eileen O’ Kane Kornreich, Christopher Knowles with Sylvia Netzer, D. Graham Burnett and “The Order of the Third Bird,” and Brian Block. Exhibited artists belong to U.S. and international museum permanent collections.
 
The Gallery has hosted the New York Arab Festival and events organized by MoMA curators and collaborates with Sorbonne Art Gallery in Paris. In 2023, The Opening Gallery partnered with the London-based publisher Eris to present exhibitions related to publications by Kenneth Goldsmith, Andres Serrano, ORLAN, Lucas Samaras, and Maurice Saatchi among other acclaimed contributors and artists. Our publishing art program has hosted readings of Edward Said’s poems by Simon Critchley, Stathis Gourgouris, and Udi Aloni, as well as readings of Gabriele Tinti by Vincent Piazza.
 
Proceeds from The Opening Gallery support Luv Michael, a nonprofit committed to enriching the lives of autistic adults.