© Images Cheonho Ahn

TREY ABDELLA
MIRRORS

KÖNIG SEOUL
4 SEPTEMBER – 3 OCTOBER 2021

Trey Abdella notices the haunting bits of banality and the horror of the mundane in MIRRORS, his second solo show with KÖNIG GALERIE and his first at KÖNIG SEOUL. The title of the show functions as a double entendre as the six new works are both self-reflective and riddled with mirrored imagery.

The lines between painting, sculpture, and assemblage become blurred in Trey Abdella’s work. The artist combines hyper realistic painting with moments of sculpted out resin and found objects as a play on illusionistic depth. Utilizing materials such as wigs, broken glass, resin, magic 8 balls, fake flowers, and functioning clocks.

In GROWING PAINS, his first solo show at KÖNIG GALERIE in Berlin in 2020, Abdella explored the shortcomings of the human condition, puberty and adulthood. MIRRORS focuses on the mundane horror of daily life honing in on the over-dramatization of the banal-such as driving through a downpour of rain in the middle of the night, waiting impatiently for someone to get ready, or getting caught in a lie.

Abdella keeps in mind a balance of narrative, both the pleasant and painful facets of suburban life. The painting ‘In The Gutter’, depicts a rain spout gushing water into a well landscaped lawn meanwhile in the distance a young boy is pinned down under the neighborhood bully. Storytelling is at the heart of Abdella’s artistic practice, the works tell individual stories that operate almost as chapters in a book.“There is always trouble in happiness“, Abdella says. 

FEATURED ARTIST

TREY ABDELLA
Trey Abdella (b. 1994 in Manassas, VA, USA) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He received a BFA from the School of Visual Arts NYC and went on to get his masters from the New York Academy of Art.

The lines between painting, sculpture, and assemblage become blurred in Trey Abdella’s work. The artist combines hyperrealistic painting with moments of sculpted-out resin and found objects that play with illusionistic depth, utilizing materials such as wigs, broken glass, resin, magic 8 balls, fake flowers, and functioning clocks.

Abdella keeps in mind a balance of narrative, both the pleasant and painful facets of suburban life. Stor...
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