I Can't Feel My Face

February 22 - September 7, 2009

"I CAN'T FEEL MY FACE"

Curated by KAWS, from the collection of Susan Hancock.

"I Can't Feel My Face" runs concurrently with KAWS' first solo exhibition of new work at Honor Fraser Gallery

Royal/T, Culver City's Japanese inspired shop/café/exhibition space, is pleased to welcome KAWS, New York based artist and designer, as the curator of their spring group exhibition, I Can't Feel My Face. Selected from Susan Hancock's collection and on view at Royal/T from February 22 through September 7, I Can't Feel My Face features works by over 25 contemporary artists.

I Can't Feel My Face shares its title with a painting by KAWS and is a centerpiece of the exhibition, which explores the theme of contemporary portraiture as a vehicle of inherent emotive expression. The faces and figures in the works evoke a range of feelings and offer a view into the fractured imagery and energy of the creative mind. Faces are transposed and contorted, abstracted and obliterated, highly detailed or conversely stripped down to the simplest of lines. Like a human face, the images are each individual, at once recognizable but also unique. Andre Ethier's one-eyed painting, "The Bitch is Back," unnerves and unsettles in its lush directness. In a multiplication of stick-figure forms, the vibrating energy in the cigarette paper collage by Oliver Payne and Nick Relph has an immediate electric pull.

I Can't Feel My Face, includes works by Olaf Breuning, Carol Dunham, Andre Ethier, Tom Friedman, Misaki Kawai, Hideaki Kawashima, KAWS, Mike Kelley, Ted Mineo, Takashi Murakami, Mr., Yoshimoto Nara, Oliver Payne & Nick Relph, Richard Prince, William Sasnal, David Shrigley, Jim Torok and Yan Pei-Ming.

The Long Way Home, the first solo exhibition of new works by KAWS in Los Angeles, will be on view concurrently at Honor Fraser Gallery, Culver City. New large paintings are included in the exhibition and are populated with his usual cross-section of familiar cultural icons. Painted with precise execution, the resulting pieces feature the trademark graphic quality inherent in his work. The paintings are joined by a large life-size Chum that acts as a sentry in the space, watching over the works while also playing with scale and proportion. The exhibition will open on February 21 from 6 – 8 pm and runs through April 4, 2009.

On the occasion of the exhibition at Royal/T, KAWS has designed a limited edition OriginalFake T-shirt that is available exclusively at Royal/T for $68.