The Irony of Capacity: A Dark, Black Comedy

Kyrae Dawaun

December 16, 2023–January 27, 2024

Kyrae Dawaun, “[crawl] by Pope L” (2023), oil on wood, 9 3/4 × 16 × 2 5/8 inches. Photo: Vivian Marie Doering

Kyrae Dawaun, “hole in the wall (seasonal maintenance) [peach pit black / summer]” (2023), limestone, particle board, and peach pit black, 44 7/8 × 40 inches. Photo: Vivian Marie Doering

Kyrae Dawaun, “coil (a gathering)” (2023), wood, gypsum, cement, ceramic tile, and grapeseed black, 7 3/4 × 24 1/2 × 18 1/2 inches. Photo: Vivian Marie Doering

Kyrae Dawaun’s solo exhibition The Irony of Capacity: A Dark, Black Comedy is his play on the realist tradition. Dawaun’s latest body of work offers an array of quotidian abstractions in sculpture, and trials of look-alike jokes via portraiture. In Dawaun’s paintings, celebrities and pop culture icons are rendered through a lens of the mundane. Sculptural prompts and domestic fixtures set the stage for the familiar figures. From residues of spring cherries to reliquaries of grapeseed reduction, Dawaun’s series of organi seasonal sculptures demonstrate black as rich in color and complex in form.

Artist

Kyrae Dawaun (b. New York, NY; lives and works in Washington, DC) earned his MFA at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA (2020), and BFA at the Corcoran College of Art and Design, Washington, DC (2013).