KAREL FUNK

Karel Funk’s inaugural solo exhibition at Miles McEnery Gallery continues his exploration of the hood as a contemporary form of portraiture, shifting focus away from the individual beneath the garment and toward an investigation of the materiality of the garment itself. Through intricate detail and iridescent color, the works explore the interplay of figuration, abstraction, geometry, and perception. Funk’s figures dwell in the ambiguous space between the seen and unseen. In these paintings, the familiar and ordinary–an isolated hood–takes on a haunting, sacred reverence. Funk’s process can only be understood through hours of manipulating, photographing, Photoshopping, and then meticulously transferring the digital image into a painted one. In the essay, “Karel Funk Has Been Painting the Same Subject for Decades.