Moonrise Sisters
Mindy Solomon is pleased to present an exhibition of New York based, longtime gallery artist Super Future Kid. Moonrise Sisters is her first solo exhibition since moving to the United States from the United Kingdom. Writer Tara Anne Dalbow has written the following essay regarding the show.
Super Future Kid is seeing double. The seven paintings in Moonrise Sisters illuminate the generative power of human connection with extraordinary emotion and immediacy. A departure from her previous works, which primarily championed individual characters and their nonhuman guides, such as butterflies, cats, and bears, this exhibition celebrates human companionship.
The twin figures seen throughout, rendered in an exuberant color
palette and arranged in striking compositions, appear to be two halves of the same whole; their relationship, a third thing that transcends the limitations and boundaries of the self. The artist’s interest in Plato’s concept of twin flames, a single soul split into two bodies, comes in part from her grandparent’s relationship. “They were so united and connected that they became one whole until my grandfather passed away,” says SFK. The artist employs symmetry, reflection, and mirroring to emphasize the figure’s interdependence and the impossibility of harmony, balance, or equilibrium if the halves were to be separated.
In rendering the invisible bonds that form between two people
visible, a butterfly emerges between two outstretched hands in Flap Your Wings, and a mirage appears between two bodies as if a portal in Adventure Awaits. While in Wild Sunsets, the connection is illustrated by the merging of two faces pressed together. The fusion creates a new visage, a unique set of eyes, capable of holding two distinct perspectives at one time. The tears overflowing an eyelid and dripping from a nostril underscore the blurring of boundaries between inside and out, the self and other.
The pairs can be seen as sisters, lovers, best friends, and even as
different versions of the same character, perhaps the artist. To understand them as quasi-self-portraits is to see how the artist relates to others but also herself and her practice as an artist. If the rainbow-lipped cartoon profiles in Bloom Tales represent the artist’s origin and the realistic depiction of the two friends in Bearadise points toward the artist’s future, then Pour Me a Rainbow brings them together with a cartoonish representation of a younger self supporting the realist figure in the burgeoning present. A gesture that serves as a poignant reminder to stay in touch with all the people we’ve been before, especially the wonder-filled child.
That SFK is in touch with her inner child is evident from the playful
nature of her subject matter, her wholly imaginative, unabashed style, and her signature technicolor palette. No two colors are the same,” explains SFK. “I mix them for each exhibition, and they exist and then are gone.” This show’s palette embraces soft lilacs, electric pinks, and vibrant shades of cobalt blue, though the entire spectrum can be found within almost all her exhibitions in some form of a rainbow. In Moonrise Sisters, they bedeck boots, necklaces, and even lips. Like the ephemeral existence of her paint colors, rainbows underscore the artist’s interest in the ephemeral nature of
beauty and the possibility of transformation from a dark and raining storm to a trail of brilliant colored light.
Rainbows are only one of many recurring motifs in SFK’s oeuvre. Water appears in the form of tears, lakes, and flower vases; its shifting state records the fluid passage of time. Butterflies recur as hair clips, guides, and the embodiment of connection. Bears, hearts, stars, flowers, flames, and totems transfigure between paintings. The recursive use of symbols produces a sense of unity and cohesion between the paintings to the effect of further immersing the viewer in the artist’s dream world. With each repetition, the icons amass new meaning, energy, and continuity. In this way, it’s not only the relationships being depicted that represent a whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts but the work itself. One would be hard-pressed to walk through the exhibition and not feel an overwhelming sense of joy, comfort, and desire to sit amongst the flowers and stay a while.
About Super Future Kid
Super Future Kid was born in East Germany in 1981. The fall of the Berlin Wall, and the subsequent heightened experience of delving into late 20th century pop culture, left a lasting impression on her, that has since been explored through colour-drenched characters displaying a range of fleeting emotions. Boredom, apprehension, friendship, serenity and longing have all appeared on the faces of the people within her playful, hyper-surreal landscapes.
Super Future Kid studied at the KHB – Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin, graduating in 2008, and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. She has exhibited internationally in Amsterdam, Berlin, Los Angeles and Miami with solo shows in Copenhagen, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, New York and Tokyo.
