WK || Act and Process
An exhibition of the French Street Artist in Lisbon at Underdog Gallery
From March 2 to March 31, 2018
Underdogs Gallery
Rua Fernando Palha, Armazém 56
1950–132, Lisbon • Portugal
Tuesday to Saturday, 2pm – 8pm
+351 218 680 462
info@under-dogs.net
An avid collector of curiosities and unusual objects, WK Interact has been amassing a vast assortment of visually striking 20th century American press photographs over the years, a selection of which forms the basis for his first solo exhibition at Underdogs Gallery. From the sources to the final artworks, however, each piece has undergone several crucial transformations that reveal the artist’s meticulous and original creative process.
On the face of it, “WK – Act and Process” seems like a collection of instant, motion-frozen narratives, each telling an individual story. On closer inspection, though, we see that through the artist’s unique (re)interpretation these intense, quasi-cinematographic snippets of crime and drama come together to form a larger story on the nature of emotions, identity, and our shared human experience.
“WK’s public art cannot stand still or keep quiet for the simple reason that the world around it is no more capable of playing dead either.” –Carlo McCormick.
WK (aka WK Interact) was born in 1969 in Caen, France. He currently lives and works in New York. His work is site specific and the imagery is chosen with a concern for encounters in an urban environment or “interactions” (as the artist indicates in his pseudonym). In 2010, audio of an interview with WK discussing his work along with a slideshow of his images was featured in a New York Times article about Jonathan LeVine Gallery. WK has shown in galleries internationally including Tokyo, London, Berlin and Mexico City. In 2005, Gestalten published his first monograph, WK Interact: Exterior-Interior Act 2. Drago published a his second book in 2009, 2.5 New York Street Life. In 2013, Jonathan LeVine Gallery presented a 25 year survey exhibition of WK’s work at a pop-up location in New York and published WK ACT4, a catalog with essays by Carlo McCormick, Patrick McNeil of Faile and Marc and Sara Schiller of Wooster Collective.
