Singles
Antone Könst

“Where no movement, no action, no choice are possible, meeting someone or something is possible exclusively through a metamorphosis of the self. It is only within itself that a being without motion can encounter the world.”

- Emanuele Coccia, The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture, 2018

Singles, an exhibition of new paintings by Antone Könst, comprises an array of solo subjects, each secluded in their own sea of color, floating like lonely islands. Flowers and plants, objects and insects and mythological figures all stretch out to find the end of the endlessness, and squeeze and compress to fit into the nothingness. Könst reckons with modern individualism here - each figure has a hint of isolation yet calls out with a bright optimism; as peers they create a choir, singing a love song in harmony. Könst is interested in mimicking the purpose of his subjects rather than simply representing them; in painting a flower, for example, he hopes the work will emulate its role as a pollinator – to reach out to the viewer as if in consolation, inviting us to connect and communicate.

Antone Könst (b.1987) has exhibited widely across the U.S. and abroad, including solo exhibitions at Tilton Gallery, NY; Marianne Boesky Gallery, NY; Each Modern, Taipei; Artist Curated Projects, Los Angeles; the Fondation des Etats Unis, in Paris; and public art commissions from The Lighthouse Works, NY, and Socrates Sculpture Park, NY. A recipient of the Rema Hort Mann Grant as well as the Harriet Hale Woolley Fellowship, he received his BFA from CalArts and his MFA from Yale University School of Art. Könst lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.