UPDATE: June 24. Just got the guestbook back from the curator at Form/Space Atelier this week. About 36 signatures there, thanks so much for leaving comments and for checking out the show to those of you who came by! I’m so excited. Now, time to plan the next one.
UPDATE: Here’s another pic from the opening. This is me:
UPDATE: Beautiful Simple is up through the end of May and part of June.
Here’s what it was like at our opening reception:
Beautiful Simple, new drawings by Design Kompany, opens TODAY, MAY 8 at Form/Space Atelier.
Join us for the reception from 6 to 8pm.
UPDATE:
Exciting. Nice to see the show Beautiful Simple recommended in the Stranger.
A previous DK art show at Vermillion
I draw lines with Sharpie markers. I like to keep things simple and uncluttered. It’s a life philosophy, you could say. I don’t own a car or a cellphone (egad!), and I draw with really basic materials. Marker. Paper.
To tell the truth, I think people overconsume. Keeping my drawings simple is one way I can say: “Hey, you don’t need to have a lot to be a lot.”
My favorite material is paper. I used to think it was canvas, but that’s changed. I like making zines, collaging paper onto paper. I put words in sometimes, cut-up stories from travel journals I wrote in my 20s. You don’t have to feel so precious about Sharpie art, either. It’s just markers.
Don’t get me wrong: I adore the use of color and texture, and have stood in awe for hours in front of Rothkos, Chagalls, O’Keeffes, and Dalis in the four corners of the globe.
But I’m in pursuit of a modern aesthetic of “beauty.” I look for what emerges in the distillation. In the clutter reduction. And the attenuation of noise.
SOLVING FOR ‘X’
I like geometric shapes and patterns. This probably has something to do with my preoccupation with mathematics. I love math. I took hydraulics and differential equations and thermodynamics in college, winding up graudating summa cum laude with an engineering degree. I like the cleanliness of neat equations, of solving for “x,” of making sense of a volume of information with just a few choice, elegant manipulations to arrive at the truth of a thing.
Here’s how I see it. If math is as close as we can get to finding truth, if geometry is one part of that that I can adopt, if edges are what define geometric shapes, and if lines are drawn to make complex ideas simple, then the edge is my muse. The line.
Simple, clear and easy to understand. I focus on the line.
Lift the edges, give them life. They are what I look at first, and often, the blind contour is the richest and most immediate kind of piece I can make.
Freehand, improv. My piano teacher said I was a natural at jazz.
I don’t want to get carried away with colors and canvases and speciality drawing tools. People today are so heavily hit with all that stuff, and stuff turns into more stuff, and art gets overly stuffy, and nobody can relax. I want people to relax. To feel air, space and comfort, to let their imaginations fill the blanks.
MAKING MARKS
I’ve seen people cry at my film screenings. They like it that I hit the nail on the head sometimes, so close to home that it moves them. Seeing sincere emotion bubble up: that’s what I like best about what I do.
I know it’s going well when I step back and go, “Wow, did I really just do that? I feel like some other force made it, and I was just the guide.”
When I go into “the zone,” the other force takes over. And I just let it. And my hand moves across the page, making marks, making lines, and it begins to do its dance, and I watch in real amazement, and unadulterated joy.
UPDATE: Here’s what it looks like as we prepare for Friday’s opening.
Beautiful Simple
Drawings by DK
Form/Space Atelier
2407 First Avenue
Belltown, Seattle
Opens Friday, May 8 :: 6pm
Runs through June 5
Other art shows by Dipika Kohli
If God is in the Details at Vermillion, Seattle 2009
Evil Ha Ha Ha at Ouch My Eye, Seattle 2008
Wavular at Vermillion, Seattle 2008
Shades Beneath an African Sky at Brooks Hall Gallery, Raleigh 1997
Japanese Lines at North Carolina Japan Center, Raleigh 1996
Education
Pratt Institute, Brooklyn 1999
North Carolina State University, Raleigh 1998
Elegant doesn't have to cost a fortune.
