‘Head Gas’: Enrico David is Showing New Work at New Museum Project Space

NEW YORK—The billowy, amorphous clouds of color look like gaseous abstracts. The new works by David Enrico are on exhibit at The New Museum‘s Studio 231. Appropriately titled “Head Gas,” a few canvases reveal hazy facial features—seemingly innocuous fields of color hew toward a mysterious theme. Meant to be haunting the construct is a little comic.

According to the museum, “The figures populating David’s work convey the struggle of adaptation, both physical and psychological, of the self and of the image.”

Studio 321, the project space adjacent to the main museum building, was created to showcase the work of emerging international artists. David, who is Italian-born and Berlin-based, is the second artist to be featured.

“Head Gas” is on view from Jan. 18 to April 22, 2012.

All photos by Arts Observer

The exhibit includes large canvases and smaller works on paper. Top of page, from left, “Untitled” and “Scraps Nebula” (both 2011, acrylic on canvas).

“Drowning on the Nile,” 2011 (acrylic on canvas).

These hand-painted “paravents,” or folding screens, were originally conceived by the artist for his apartment.

Detail of “Enrico Aphid,” 2011 (acrylic on canvas).


“Enrico Aphid.”