Artist: Emma Pryde
Exhibition title: Counterplayer
Venue: King’s Leap, New York, US
Date: May 6 – June 13, 2021
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and King’s Leap, New York
…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 fat 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 diferently 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…”
– Coco Fitterman, excerpted from Counterplayer, a small book published by Sapp Press on occasion of Emma Pryde’s exhibition
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.
Emma Pryde, Counterplayer, 2021, exhibition view, King’s Leap, New York
Emma Pryde, Counterplayer, 2021, exhibition view, King’s Leap, New York
Emma Pryde, Nine Doors, 2021, Oil on panel in aluminum frame, 20 ½ x 16 ½ inches (52 x 42 cm)
Emma Pryde, Counterplayer, 2021, exhibition view, King’s Leap, New York
Emma Pryde, One Gives Birth to the Other Who in Turn Gives Birth to the First, 2021, Oil on panel in aluminum frame, 20 ½ x 16 ½ inches (52 x 42 cm)
Emma Pryde, Counterplayer, 2021, exhibition view, King’s Leap, New York
Emma Pryde, Split Analyst, 2021, Oil on panel in aluminum frame, 20 ½ x 16 ½ inches (52 x 42 cm)
Emma Pryde, Counterplayer, 2021, exhibition view, King’s Leap, New York
Emma Pryde, Inanimate Things (Agoraphobic Madonna), 2021, Oil on panel in aluminum frame, 20 ½ x 16 ½ inches (52 x 42 cm)
Emma Pryde, Extreme Temperatures, 2021, Oil on panel in aluminum frame, 20 ½ x 16 ½ inches (52 x 42 cm)
Emma Pryde, Counterplayer, 2021, exhibition view, King’s Leap, New York
Emma Pryde, Counterplayer’s Anamnesis, 2021, Oil on panel in aluminum frame, 20 ½ x 16 ½ inches (52 x 42 cm)
Emma Pryde, Elpis, 2021, Oil on panel in aluminum frame, 20 ½ x 16 ½ inches (52 x 42 cm)
Emma Pryde, Counterplayer, 2021, exhibition view, King’s Leap, New York
Emma Pryde, The More Innocence You Have the More Violence You Constellate, 2021, Resin, steel, rhinestone tiara, led light, 13 x 7 x 18 inches (33 x 18 x 46 cm)
Emma Pryde, The More Innocence You Have the More Violence You Constellate, 2021, Resin, steel, rhinestone tiara, led light, 13 x 7 x 18 inches (33 x 18 x 46 cm)
Emma Pryde, The More Innocence You Have the More Violence You Constellate, 2021, Resin, steel, rhinestone tiara, led light, 13 x 7 x 18 inches (33 x 18 x 46 cm)