Alexa Dark Live at Ki Smith Gallery

Enigmatic dark alternative pop muse Alexa Dark masterfully blends cinematic allure with intimate storytelling. Raised across London, Barcelona, Munich, and New York City, her multicultural upbringing infuses her music with a captivating international mystique. Inspired by a wide range of artists - from Nancy Sinatra and Françoise Hardy to Portishead - her dark, genre-defying sound is an exploration of emotion and intrigue, greatly influenced by the cinema of French New Wave and Old Hollywood film noir. She honed her unique sound and enticing live presence as a teenager on London stages, cultivating a retro, Bond-like world with a mysterious femme fatale at its center.  Her debut EP, "Dark, Vol. I," released via AWAL with features in SPIN, Earmilk, and more, was recorded in the heart of NYC with Matt Chiaravalle (Debbie Harry, Warren Zevon), mastered by Grammy-award winner Emily Lazar (Beck, Haim) and Grammy-nominated Joe Lambert (Sharon Van Etten, Angel Olsen). Through the 7 songs, Dark tells the tale of “giving into love, losing it all, and exploring the darker sides of myself.” Her debut project highlights her poignant lyricism, haunting, siren-like vocals, as well as her compelling production, and marks only the beginning of her artistic journey.

Alexa Dark's LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/alexadark

Ryan Bock specializes in painting, drawing, puppetry, animation and experimental film methods. Bock’s practice is rooted in a need for narrative structure. Residing somewhere between mythology and nightmare, Bock depicts mise-en-scène riddled with symbology and allusions both cinematic and painterly. Maintaining a fascination for shape, shade, shadow, structure and optical illusion, Bock deconstructs his subject matter into often barely-recognizable delineations and structurally unsound repetitive patterns. In an attempt to confront the contemporary individual’s relationship to mortality, fear and superstition, Bock depicts correlations between the human figure and its innovations: technology, architecture and religion—both historically and fictitiously. By consistently contrasting historical subjects with those of the present, and using the recurring patterns found to generate predictions about our future—a process he refers to as ‘dusty futurism’—Bock propels his audience to reconsider the routine human experience and discloses the illusions implemented to keep them from questioning. Commissions and/or collaborations welcome.