Second Floor Gallery, Center for Arts and Learning, Feb. 1 – Apr. 27, 2019
Reception during Feb. 1st Art Walk, 4-8pm.
Medieval people made pilgrimages, walking across entire countries to visit specific religious sites that held relics – parts of the bodies of saints. Though the reliquaries holding these objects were highly decorated, the important part was inside – you could often open a tiny door to reach in and hold the relic while praying. People believed they had to have this physical connection in order truly commune with the spiritual.
Alexis Kyriak’s work shares this sensibility. Her forms are never whole; they are not bodies carrying identities, but instead embody a perception of the elements, the seasons, the divine, the mythic. The spirit and body are almost one and the same, but there is a tension between weight and emptiness, light and darkness. Kyriak sees them as representing a concept of the feminine, but they are not women. She never gives them heads.
Alexis Kyriak lives and works in Northfield, Vermont. She has studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, the Art Students’ League, the National Academy of Fine Art & Design, the Brooklyn Museum School, and elsewhere. She has shown work locally at various venues including the Helen Day Center in Stowe, Studio Place Arts in Barre, and Artful Things in Lebanon, New Hampshire, among others.
