Kirsten Deirup

Hesse Flatow is pleased to present the opening of Dead Channel, a solo exhibition of paintings by Kirsten Deirup, marking her third solo presentation with the gallery.

The exhibition’s title, Dead Channel, borrows from the opening line of William Gibson’s 1984 science-fi ction novel Neuromancer, which imagines a world in which human consciousness interfaces with cyberspace. Defunct apparatuses of a not-too-distant past like the corded telephone, a clicky computer keyboard, or shiny CD dot Deirup’s painterly mechanical graveyards, which feel strangely archeological. Deirup treats obsolete media not as nostalgic artifacts but as haunted thresholds: objects once used to connect outward that now register instead as sites of interruption, projection, and estrangement. In these paintings, the world arrives as both image and aft erimage, seductive in its surfaces and unsett led in its transmission.

While human presence is merely suggested through man-made artifacts left behind, Deirup introduces new beings into this body of work. Part mythical creature, part digital ghost, these fi gures seem to emerge from underground depths or the recesses of the subconscious, perhaps as unintended byproducts of technology’s accelerating pace. Hauntingly beautiful, their toothy grimaces and sharp talons are off set by iridescent feathers, swishing tails, and jeweled adornments. Positioned to confront the viewer directly, they inject a sense of surveillance into the act of looking, which is no longer passive or anonymous.

Kirsten Deirup (b. 1980, Berkeley, CA) graduated from The Cooper Union in 2003. She has had solo exhibitions at Hesse Flatow, New York, NY; de boer gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York, NY; Guild and Greyschul, New York, NY; and Rare, New York, NY. Group exhibitions include Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, NY; Jeff Bailey Gallery, New York, NY; Marc Wolf Contemporary Art, San Francisco, CA; Geoff rey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA; and Roberts and Tilton, Los Angeles, CA. She has completed residencies at the Palazzo Monti in Brescia, Italy, the Farpath Foundation in Dijon, France, and Idlewild, CA. Her work is held in the permanent collection of MoMA, New York. She lives and works in Hudson Valley, New York.