Artist Karel Funk and WAG curator Andrew Kear were in the Diamond Lane with Sarah Jo Kirsch. Missed it? Watch the video here!
Winnipeg's own Karel Funk is known for his mesmerizing portraits of lone figures. As the largest and first true survey of his work, this retrospective brings together paintings from across North America.
The subtle evolution of Funk’s practice is explored, beginning with the artist’s meditative portraits of hooded figures, responses to conflicting senses of intimacy and anonymity he experienced on New York subways. In his most recent work, the human form is abandoned and replaced by images of bundled, crumpled, and knotted outerwear. The figures that populate most of Funk’s paintings exude a silent contemplation that places them in dialogue with the post-humanist figurative painting tradition: from the Italian and Northern Renaissance to Photorealism. Funk's work is held in major museum collections, including the Guggenheim and the Whitney in New York, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. 
Andrew Kear is the Associate Curator of Historical Canadian Art at the WAG. He and Karel have become great friends over the course of the exhibition and planning.
“Karel Funk’s paintings are unapologetically contemporary,” says Andrew Kear. “In an age of mass surveillance and the 24-hour news cycle, Funk’s hooded avatars hover between expressions of anonymity and individualism, alienation and concealed delinquency, touching on themes of social conformity and spiritual transcendence.”
A fully-illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition as well as a new documentary on the artist directed by Caelum Vatnsdal and produced by Andrew Kear. Karel Funk (untitled) explores Funk's art and inspirations, documenting the completion of one painting from start to finish, and following him through streets and galleries in New York. Watch below!
Source: http://wag.ca/art/exhibitions/current-exhibitions/display,exhibition/181/karel-funk
Sun, May 5, 6:00 PM
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