West McHenry

Amie Cunat

September 7 - October 12, 2024

Second Thursday Reception: Thursday, September 12 | 6-9 pm
Artist Meet and Greet: Saturday, September 28 | 4-6 pm

Open Saturdays from 12-5pm or by appointment

Peep Projects is pleased to present West McHenry, Amie Cunat’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. West McHenry refers to the city where the artist grew up, giving geographical and personal significance to this new body of work. Influenced by the legacy of pop abstraction and surrealist biomorphism, Cunat’s work uses chromatically charged and optically insistent variations of geometric, decorative, and organic elements from diverse sources such as monster movies (The Thing, Alien, The Blob, Them!), Karl Blossfeldt’s photos of botanical imagery, Shaker gift drawings, historical catalogs of Japanese fireworks, and Art Deco embellishments.

Intimately scaled paintings appear like contained gems against the white gallery walls, with images that resonate with the familiar, but do not try to reduce or explain. The exhibition also features two suspended assemblages that resemble a cross-section of a suburban house with brick-laden forms. However, the omission of solid walls and their vibrant color disrupt the domestic reference, making them appear unstable and transparent. Embedded within the structures are shapes evocative of cartoon-like bursts, fish gills, intestines or tails, blurring the distinction between human and animal, event and site, and the perceptive and abstract. Cunat uses these structures to question how our memories of a place that inform our sense of belonging are not concrete recollections, but rather permeable and autonomous.