Selected Writings
Press Release/Reviews/Interviews
Xibt Contemporary Art Mag
Zweisamkeit - Being In Two Is No More Than doubled Solitude
Kylie Manning makes it easy to believe that she makes straightforward paintings. They present themselves like gestural scenes, are usually frontal, and depict groups of people set against or within a landscape. Sometimes, an activity is depicted: piggy-back racing, fishing, boating. Sometimes the activity is as simple as lounging, or even standing.
Manning paints with lyrical deft and the assertive confidence of an artist who knows what she’s doing. You trust her rendering, the building of atmosphere and temperature. And then, while studying the bloom of pink and acidic olive into ochres and deeper greens, you notice that one of the faces in a group of people is, in fact, a manic smiley. Many of the people don’t have faces at all, but, rather, swatches of paint that hint toward gazes. Some figures are outlined and give way immediately to the underlying weather Manning has layered and re-layered in washes and scumbles, the life-drawing equivalent of a stick figure or chalk outline. The status of the artworks as scenes becomes uncertain as the conditions of narrative also melt: Who are these people, and how do they know each other? Where did they come from? Why are they looking at me? Are they people at all? What are they doing in that river?
By design, these questions have no answer. Contemporary U.S. figuration places a high premium on the creation of consistent worlds and how bodies communicate narrative. Paint is the tool which makes and maintains these worlds. For Manning, paint is a medium of inconsistency. If a line can be used to describe the parameter of a body which would not exist otherwise, it can also break the continuity of a painted picture. A line can misbehave: it can unstick itself from its place in proper perspective; can contour the wrong parts of the story; remind us that images are not a given in art. If eyes can gaze back at a viewer, so can stains. If brushwork can evoke water, grasses and mists, it can also do a dance led less by grace than excitement, unsettling a painting laterally, in ripples. If gesture is a language, so are expressions and emoticons.
When Manning talks about her own work, she will often break out in laughter as she directs her audience from passages of painterly bravura to these moments of rupture. Her laughter, itself a rupture, highlights the pleasure of the breaks, how material tenuousness is a surprise. Just as the beach tourist mistakes the play of light on water for the water itself, a casual viewer might mistake a painting for what it appears to be. Look at either enough, and liquidity makes structures provisional, and pictures mirages. Gravity and movement are organized by deeper, murkier forces always on the verge of shifting.
In another part of her life, Manning worked in commercial fishing, which taught her how to literally read the water for sub- surface cues, from creatures to danger to bioluminescence. Manning’s images are not so different from plunging a hand into water at the right moment, wanting to catch something. In the split second before knowing whether that something was really there, desire makes it almost palpable in the palm. In the mind’s eye, paint slides into form and stays put. But in real time, the hand closes wetly around itself; the painting moves slyly out of focus; and the viewer is left with the retinal burn of what might have been, which remains on the canvas like a stamp. The image is already on the move, ready to bait you again elsewhere, in a smile, the dip of a waist, the movement of a branch against a cloud. Will you be ready this time?
- Gaby Collins-Fernandez
Anonymous Gallery
Zweisamkeit - Being In Two Is No More Than Double Solitude
Press Release
Anonymous is pleased to announce Zweisamkeit - Being In Two Is No More Than Double Solitude, Kylie Manning’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Consisting of 4 large-scale oil paintings from a series created throughout the pandemic; each work shares an upside-down romanticism where mystic bodies intertwine and disconnect - living in worlds alone, yet together. It is often fragments of one figure or face that project more so than the reduced complexions of surrounding cohorts. In paintings like Stungenhour - where everything can start again, curves of a hip or lip dissolve and dive into siennas and then dash and leap into gestures of cobalts and elusive encounters. Constructed through complex layers of oil paint and washes, paintings like Manning’s Piggy, 2021 intensify the human presence by drawing you near a familiar gathering only to disillusion through unidentified yet distinguished somatic signals.
As the art historian Armin Kunz has written about Manning’s work: Her observations return in disintegrating, dystopian landscapes that are both anarchic and humorous. Large, undulating masses billow forth and reveal themselves to the viewer only gradually and force us to contemplate our relationship with intimacy as well as nature. At the same time, her virtuoso brushwork displays an irreverent spontaneity that manages to evoke a specific time and place, thereby grounding us as viewers in our own here and now.
It is this intense intimacy in Manning’s work that embraces and comforts you, but that can also leave you abandoned. Feelings of seclusion have been unrelenting for many in the last year - whether solo, with a partner, or in groups. In English, the meaning of the word lonely considers one person that is isolated from others and therefore incomplete without a unit of two or more - where one's emotional state is dependent upon physical status. The German word Zweisamkeit infers another state of being, where two people are so complete in their togetherness that the rest of the world ceases to exist. However as Zweisamkeit replaces one with two, Manning then questions lonely as the derivative of two equaling a whole, where that same completion equals double the solitude.
WhiteWall Magazine
Kylie Manning Explores Togetherness at Anonymous Gallery
Kylie Manning’s first solo exhibition with anonymous gallery, “Zweisamkeit – Being In Two is No More Than Double Solitude” features four large-scale oil paintings made through the course of the pandemic. The show open through June 12—titled the German word for “togetherness”—displays Manning’s mystically romantic style, which has laid the groundwork to explore themes, like solitude and camaraderie, familiar for many of us after a time of social isolation.
Influenced by past work in commercial fishing, Manning’s understanding of the movement of water shines in her use of soft, aqueous brushstrokes that make her choice of oil paint appear as if it were a heavily pigmented watercolor. These fluid, spontaneous markings support the greater narrative of the works, where the figures depicted are simultaneously intertwined and disconnected, both together and alone amid Manning’s gestural landscapes of color.
Leaving us with thoughts of both intimacy and abandonment, viewers can expect to find on view works like the cool-toned Vorfreude – awaiting pleasure is itself a pleasure, the titular Zweisamkeit – being in two is no more than doubled solitude, and a gathering of figures coupled, carrying one another, Piggy.
- Pearl Fontaine
Archive Massive Gallery Spinnerei
By the Horns
In her latest series, Manning uses large-scale oil paintings to lift up the rug and peer beneath at the dusty past of the glorified wild frontier. Nestled between smart painting and gorgeous painting, she playfully reworks the image of the American Cowboy over and over, challenging the cliché with a kind of friendly aggressiveness. The works are riddled with contrasting qualities, are all at once masculine yet feminine, emotional yet withholding, solemn yet hilarious. These oppositions create a kind of vibrating tension just beneath the surface of the paint, a life force.
At first glance, there is a quality to the paintings that almost looks like something that's been hunted, a buck turned inside out, organs and sinews freshly exposed to the air. That's not to say there is a grotesque quality to the paint, rather a glistening rawness that looks at the same time alluring-- practically delicious-- yet taboo somehow. A native Alaskan, Manning grew up engulfed in vast, wild landscapes with a certain spirit, a shared essence, that binds frontiers intimately with human beings. It is the kind of sensuousness that illuminates an almost secret agreement between all forms of life.
Manning grew up untamed; open, running through forests and tumbling down gritty mountainsides.
One can almost see her younger self, with knotted hair and skinned knees, triumphantly galloping across a plain of weeds and gravel in her own childhood games, unaware of how they would later inspire her.
The subverted American masculinity in Manning's work is not always easy to behold-- while contextually rich, the artist refuses to reveal too much, seems to want to challenge us, play with us, and this is absolutely instrumental to the success of her canvases. A virtuoso with color and texture, she is able to transport us into a warmly sensuous yet brutally erotic memory of a world that once was. The series, aptly titled By the Horns, bucks and sways-- it is alive, inquisitive and strong, a portrait of the artist herself somehow.
- Katie Armstrong
Zeedijk Kunsthalle
Fisticuffs
Fisticuffs, uses three segments to mark increments in the development of Kylie Manning’s painting research. She used each segment to give the viewer insight into her own character, personality, and position in painting. Through the use of chaptered masculine imagery, Manning exposes a rhythm, using form as a shell to direct color and line to the viewer. The paintings have brilliant academic moments that slow down the viewer giving them informative landing pads, which guide them through patches of un-abashed anti-forms. The third and final segment, brings the transition full-circle, conceptualizing historical iconography on unbleached linen.
Although painting for so long, there remains something pure and secretive, her paintings reflect what she gains from the world—taking in some sort of essence of what is around us and putting it out there for all to see. Manning’s gift of painting comes from an innate sense of intuition untouched by the outside world. Her vision comes through clearly, giving life to vibrating, electrical form.
-Fridey Mickel
Boston Art Review - ISSUE 01: NOTIONS OF PLACE
Between Frontiers: In Conversation with Kylie Manning
Interview by Lauren Pellerano Gomez
A sense of place has long influenced painter Kylie Manning’s work who, raised between Mexico and Alaska, has a unique relationship to geographical belonging. After an introduction by Manning’s curator—fellow artist and Alaskan Patrice Helmar—I was struck by Manning’s treatment of boundlessness; exploring the tension between containment and fluidity through form.
In Manning’s paintings, the magic is in the space between: whether navigating the relationship between spaghetti Westerns and German wildness or engaging in a technical style that is both joyously loose and scrupulously defined. While exhibiting in New York and Berlin, Manning and I spoke about the artist’s larger-than-life work which grabs on and gazes back.
How does your work respond to space?
My paintings are all about creating space. My goal is to utilize temperature and light in a way that invites viewers to remember a time when the light was just so. This buys me room to be quite a bit more open in my narrative, which allows for a universality in origin and orientation. If I can capture a specific light, it transports people into the space. Then they can meet the abstracted figures in a less objective way.
What interests you about space as a concept?
Space has always been a source of interest for my work—having been raised half in a small fishing town in Alaska, and half in a small fishing town in Mexico. My parents chose these off the grid locations for the actual sense of space, breathability, openness. They wanted us to have a sense of cultural relativity in place, community, and nature (also they were hippies who loved to surf). I worked on commercial fishing boats for years and would be out
on the ocean for large chunks of time. We made a conscious choice to come back to land. I think like most Alaskans, I feel at home in massive wild spaces. I’m overly claustrophobic, and adore being alone.
How do you conceive of scale in relation to your work?
I make large scale oil paintings because the scale I am used to being around is twice my size. Yes the people all around me have influenced everything I do but the spaces I’ve been privy to are in everything I make. After grad school I was sent to work in Leipzig, Germany and space came to the forefront again. I hope people get lost in the dusky gendered colors in my paintings and are transported to a space that could be.
Tell us about this particular body of work.
I wanted to recreate a version of the keyhole psychology in people’s personal viewing experience. The oversized paintings are populated with packs of people that are looking back at the viewer, while the viewer is actually on the inside of a series of multiple figurative compositions that reflect the process of looking and measuring. The masterpiece scale disassociates the idea of masters with masterpieces while the crystallized gestural figures oppose a minimizing gaze.
Your work blurs the line between figuration and gestural abstraction. What interests you
about this approach?
I think my interest being smack dab between figuration and abstraction comes from my upbringing in multiple places: I’m a romantic and always want a bit of both. I was raised by extremely well versed art teachers. So, to be honest, I don’t know why or how because I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t engaging in this way. The apple didn’t fall very far from the tree. I’ve always been investigating this way, and I’ve just gone farther down the rabbit hole.
What pushed you down that particular rabbit hole?
Because of my upbringing it’s the only thing I’ve ever cared about, even as a young child. Certainly, my time spent in Leipzig around so many great and weird figurative painters certainly pushed me along. There is a very different response to American minimalist painting in Leipzig because eastern Germany was behind the wall for that artistic movement. But I think it goes farther back. I grew up around Tlingit formline and Xuichol color and have dedicated my life to learning about image making. Also, I make my best work in response to something: a sketch, a photo, an image of some sort—when I jump off of and a push against something, my brushwork has more buoyancy. I have been enjoying these multiple figure compositions because the figures fade into the storm of the of the piece becoming a pure compositional decision.
How has your practice been influenced by your time spent in Germany?
My time spent in Germany had a great influence on my work, being surrounded by a community of artists who encouraged and believed in one another had a huge impact my process. I got to live in a country that supported artists in a serious way, a culture that prioritized the arts, and an art world that had a completely unique relationship to the last 50 years of art history.
What motivated your move to Leipzig?
I had originally been sent over by Eileen Guggenheim and the NY Academy of Art. I was set up with a studio in the Spinnerei in Leipzig as was a gift, a summer residency awarded to a few students. The following year as I was finishing my studies I was offered an exhibition back in Berlin and this opened the door to head back as quickly as school finished. I had just sold a few paintings so it was the first time in my life when I could paint as my full time job. I lived humbly but relished waking up and working all day and then reading art theory in the evening without distraction or agenda.
Did this particular experience affect your work stylistically or conceptually?
The depth of my work and the quality of my handling immediately jumped up a notch; I was able to build a bridge between good painting and smart painting. My works began to reflect upon the process of image making. I began to explore my own stereotype as an Alaskan/American in Germany and began to unravel the assumptions of “true grit” being a doubled sword of bravery and idiocy.
How so?
I started painting ‘western’ imagery and read Karl May novels. May was a man who wrote about the ‘Wild West’ without having ever left east Germany—he pretended his novels were travel guides when in fact they were from his imagination. In fact, his stories went on to become spaghetti westerns starring people like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. The proposed idea being that a great deal of what was considered and glorified in Germany as the ‘Wild West’ was actually from one man’s [very limited] imagination.
From these silly, wonky figurative landscapes I began to play with humor and gravity, developing paintings with a bit more consciousness. Being around so many great male painters, I also was able to further dismantle the idea of masterpieces being associated with males through working in a massive scale.
Does this approach still resonate with you now?
Now, years later, themes still pop up from my time in East Germany. At the moment, I find a great deal of the photos of my childhood in Mexico and Alaska are informing my compositions. Lately, I’ve been studying a way to push figuration into a raw version of gesture. I’m trying to hone in on color and light and paint oils like Sumi-e. I can’t say I know what I want to work on next, just that I want to work with this furious frenetic momentum and then see what happens. Themes pop in and out but it always seem to come back to this core push and pull between wildness and structure, form and anti-form, information and implication.
Could you tell us about your recent exhibition “NGORONGORO II” in Berlin.
My exhibition kicked off during Berlin’s Gallery Weekend. I’ve been curated as a part of the group show NGORONGORO II, which refers to a collapsed volcanic crater in Tanzania. I was thrilled to be a part of it as the artists and curators involved are people I adore and admire.
Kylie Manning`s work celebrates and embraces a violent sensuosity that is both the nature of painting and of desire. Her paintings are about being picked up, swept away, and dissolved into a mass of pure sensation.
- Eric Fischl