Shay Kun

D & F is pleased to announce Nature Does Not Know Extinction; All It Knows Is Transformation our first solo exhibition with Shay Kun.

Perception is mathematically impossible, yet our visual systems have more to go on than just bare perceptual input. We use heuristics and short-cuts based on the physics and statistics of the natural world to make logical guesses about the nature of reality. Just as we interpret a two-dimensional drawing as representing a three-dimensional object, we interpret the two-dimensional visual input of a real scene as indicating a three-dimensional world. This process occurs automatically, filling in the gaps with inferred information and making perception possible. Our brains use the same process of intelligent guessing to reconstruct the past.

The process of remembering is less like recording a video and more like solving a puzzle. We piece together memories, based both on what we actually remember and what seems most likely given our knowledge of the world. Just as it make educated guesses in perception, the human mind fills in the gaps of memory, reconstructing the most plausible versions of our past. Nature Does Not Know Extinction; All it Knows Is Transformation continues Kun’s inquiry as to the nature of memory and perception. The ground level focuses on specifically on memory and is partially a reimagining of a 2012 solo show he painted. Recreating a climactic moment and subsequently revisiting of it, the event is thus modified through the filter of time and through Kun’s custom-made digital filter which he utilizes as a perceptual time-travel experience.

The bottom floor of the exhibition focuses on the aspects of perception, depicting aerial views of slums around the world, manipulated by the artist to create a geometric system of labyrinths, transforming a loaded political subject into a decorative pattern, creating a beautiful two-dimensional representation of what is in reality a three-dimensional hell.

Shay Kun (b. 1974, b. Tel-Aviv) currently lives and works in New York City. He received his BFA from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, 1998 and his MFA from Goldmiths College, London, 2000. in recent years his work has been exhibited at Linda Warren projects in Chicago, Michael Schultz Gallery in Berlin, LaMontagne Gallery in Boston, Hezi Cohen Gallery in Tel-Aviv among many more as well as numerous group shows, including The Shanghai Contemporary Art Museum, The American University museum in Washington, University of saint Francis, Indiana, Untitled gallery in New York, Leslie Smith in Amsterdam, and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York.

His works can be found in many private and public collection, "Nature Does Not Know Extinction; All It Knows Is Transformation" is the first show of Shay's work with D&F contemporary, please contact the gallery for further information.