Kevin Klamminger Takes a 'Promethean Approach' at Unit
Works that put some muscle into it.
Austrian artist Kevin Klamminger is making his Unit debut with a new solo exhibition. Through a display of paintings and pencil works, Klamminger explores what happens when conscious and unconscious collide.
Promethean Approach is brought together by a sunset palette of rich oranges, yellows and reds — creating a dramatic play of light and shadow that reflects the artist’s thematic interest in opposition. Horses, butterflies, shields and spears emerge as visual clues, pulling viewers into a game of meaning-making, adding to this tension.
A sense of irony shines through Klamminger’s work as he flirts with the absurdity of heroic symbols, as seen in his hyper-muscular horses. The artist is drawn to the animal’s athletic build and anxious nature, a tension best captured in “Veni, Vidi, Vici” where two centurions clash on a beach, though the fibrous necks of their steeds bend and twist into one another, morphing into a grotesque anatomical study.
Rather than taking a premeditative approach, the artist leans into an intuitive creative process, letting these representational elements spill onto the canvas, often appearing “without warning,” as the gallery notes “Klamminger believes that psychoanalysing his own imagery would open too many doors, doors he does not necessarily want to go through.”
Fractured and harmonious at once, the exhibition nurtures an imaginative space, refusing easy interpretations yet playfully inviting them all the same.
Promethean Approach will be on view at Unit until December 8, 2024.
Unit
3 Hanover Square
London W1S 1HD
