A FAIR OF FRAGILE LIMBS: GAUDY SKIES

a solo exhibit by GNCH

In visual perception, the Gestalt principle says that we tend to visualize patterns out of isolated forms. It’s no wonder then that the sky presents us with a practically boundless canvas of possibility. It may be a testament to our inner capacities for worldbuilding that we see animals, figures, or perhaps even people in a sky abundant with random, amorphous masses. Skyscapes have been inspiring artists for centuries to look up and take refuge in the thought that something so vast can connect with us on such a curious level.

For the artist GNCH, the skies are alive and full of eccentricities. In them, he sees his motley crew of surreal and uncanny characters. Drawing on his background in concept art and design, GNCH creates oddities that take their cues from children’s toys, cartoons, and pop culture, with just a dash enough of the macabre to make them truly stick in one’s mind. A key characteristic among them – long limbs that stretch out from each fragile figure’s body, as if they could be twisted off like a disfigured toy. From here, GNCH takes the collective name for each of his exhibitions: A Fair of Fragile Limbs. For this iteration, he takes his traveling circus up to the Gaudy Skies.

In A Fair of Fragile Limbs: Gaudy Skies, GNCH envisions his characters up in the heavens, or perhaps he forms them as parts of the clouds themselves. Departing from his usual graphite on paper, the artist renders his works on ten large-scale canvases using muted acrylic tones. When describing his style, the artist calls it dystopian. Indeed, one may find a dystopian nature to his twisting of motifs normally associated with innocence and play. Yet GNCH hopes his viewers look upon his gaudy skies where an unlikely friend lurks in every corner and feel they are not alone.

-text by Mara Fabella