Art World
The Vibrant Paintings of Andrew Kuo Hone in on the Tender Side of ‘Quantitative Aesthetics’
Browse through some of the humorous and heartfelt paintings on view at Broadway Gallery.
Annie Armstrong
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Among the slate of early winter shows this year, Broadway Gallery’s “Me, Lately,” an offering of new paintings by Andrew Kuo, was a highlight amid the downtown scene. The vibrant and cerebral offerings span the artist’s sense of humor, affinity for cultural references, and propensity for self-reflection.
Tucked below the paintings with layers of jagged circles, the viewer finds that they are, in fact, looking at pie graphs. In the work Things I Could Be we see several slices: “optimistic,” “pessimistic,” “right but sad,” “wrong but happy.” Most Years #1 is composed of “the moment a good idea becomes bad,” “someone else’s version of the summer,” “a quick, memorable trip away from home” in clever circular color blocks.
These works play with the term that Artnet News’s Ben Davis coined earlier this year, “quanitative aesthetics“, which takes the visual trappings of mathematics and reframes them into a purely aesthetic context. Take a look at some of Kuo’s paintings below.
Andrew Kuo, Things I’m Bad At (8/30/2023) , 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Broadway Gallery.
Andrew Kuo, Things I Could Do (8/1/2023) , 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Broadway Gallery.
Install image of Andrew Kuo’s “Me, Lately” at Broadway Gallery. Courtesy of the artist and Broadway Gallery.
Andrew Kuo, Slanted and Enchanted, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Broadway Gallery.
Install image of Andrew Kuo’s “Me, Lately” at Broadway Gallery. Courtesy of the artist and Broadway Gallery.
Andrew Kuo, The Times, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Broadway Gallery.
Install image of Andrew Kuo’s “Me, Lately” at Broadway Gallery. Courtesy of the artist and Broadway Gallery.
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