Salome
Luke Ivy Price
September 30, 2020 - October 14, 2020
Ki Smith Gallery announces Salome, a solo exhibition of works by Luke Ivy Price. This is Price’s second exhibition with the Gallery, and it marks the grand opening of Ki Smith Gallery’s location in the East Village.
Salome, a body of work composed by Price between 2019 and 2020, is a presentation of painting, sculpture, and drawing that confronts the eponymous story’s rich, yet fraught, written and performed history. Using Oscar Wilde’s 1892 play as a starting point, Price depicts the story of Salome, the princess of Judaea, who pursues, as Price puts it, “an investigation of lust, carelessly pursued and immorally executed.” The exhibition will include a rotating installation on two-week cycles. The artist has arranged his works into three parts that slowly unveil the narrative, a nod to the successive departures that have revolutionized the story of Salome from its sparse biblical source text.
Price has pulled vignettes of interpersonal, often sexually-driven, contact from the story and highlighted them in an array of works that clutch the emotional depths of the human experience. A pair of sculptures, Salome Approaches and The Baptist Recoils, captures the ultimate moment of confrontation in an unrequited love. Another highlight of the exhibition is a painting entitled Salome’s Reward, in which Salome is seen cradling the Baptist’s decapitated head. She is framed by a gap in breeze-kissed curtains that remind one of a slick entrance into the underworld. In this way, Price’s telling of the story does not rely on shock value: he renders this fallen world with a caress, a careful expressiveness that devastates. His surfaces glow but do not shine. They whisper incantations but do not sing.
About Luke Ivy Price
Luke Ivy Price is an American artist who lives and works in New York City. Price’s practice is rooted in narratives that display his passion for history and craftsmanship. Though he draws inspiration from historical figures and oft-told stories, Price’s gestural abstractions of the human form place primary importance on the inspection of emotions and interpersonal relationships. Recent bodies of work have employed the Greek mythological figure Cassandra and Oscar Wilde’s 1891 play Salome as rhetorical devices in Price’s exploration of gender, intimacy, and his own sexual history. As he explores these themes, Price remains a fervent follower of the modernist tradition rather than any exclusive medium. Price believes technique and respect for materials is essential, however, his comfort and training in a multitude of crafts––from fine art to construction––has generated resourceful and ingenuitive combinations. For example, a series of sleek, expressive artworks from his Salome exhibition was expertly crafted entirely from common homebuilding materials.
Price's work has been exhibited nationally in New York, Miami and his home state of North Carolina where he left his day job at a cotton mill and board seat on the local arts council to pursue his career in New York. His collaboration with the One Love Foundation raised significant funds to combat intimate partner violence, and his recent solo show Salome was celebrated by The Art Newspaper’s Gabriella Angeleti as a must-see exhibition in New York City. Luke Ivy Price currently shows with Ki Smith Gallery and has works in several prominent private collections.