Kevin Ford
A Piece is Loose
February 27th - April 9th 2016
"...Take a brush and some paints and make someone's nose out of it, it's kind of absurd, but not doing it is just as absurd." -Willem De Kooning, Painters Painting
Tops Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of paintings by Kevin Ford.
In a moment of image onslaught, Ford turns to close observation. The chosen objects are comical and overlooked, masses of form and flatness. He explores the act of intense looking using a combination of delicate brushwork and loose airbrushing. Objects hover in and out of focus, capturing how our eyes hold onto things, release them, and then return to them once again. After a 15-year journey away from the medium through a detour into sculpture and kinetic works, A Piece is Loose, marks a return to Kevin Ford's first love, painting.
Quotidian objects such as his wife's shoes, snacks, kitchen sponges, and studio ephemera are simultaneously banal and exalted. Ford's use of cartoons, Spanish still life's, symbolism, and abstraction bring a sense of historic urgency to the overlooked, everyday sublime. The figures are tactile, fleshy and abject. A foot might just be a foot, but it is also a monument, a pyramid, or a table leg with toes. With A Piece is Loose, Ford seeks an efficient clarity with his flat-footed approach to his subject and use of the formal means of painting.
