Do Canaries Have Accents? Notes From Berlin: Kaye Donachie

POST BY KAREN ARCHEY

Kaye Donachie, Serenely let us move to distant places, 2008.

AFC Associate Editor Karen Archey was fortunate enough to spend some time in Berlin during our recent European art tour.  This series of reviews reflects a handful of galleries we visited throughout May and June.

Peres Projects
Schlesische Str. 26
10997 Berlin Germany
Kaye Donachie, Walpurgis Night

Best viewed by those who have a penchant for encyclopedic content, Kaye Donachie preoccupies herself with esoteric characters such as actor-cum-cult member Mark Frechette. In a recent painting, Donachie details Frechette's bizarre death from asphyxiation after dropping a set of barbell weights on his throat while in jail. The artist avoids heavy-handedness by hazily rendering figures that bleed into their grounds, approaching and denying focal and narrative resolution. Donachie's work brings to mind a less gay and more feminine Hernan Bas—perhaps the East Coast's current “it” painter—by sharing moments of romanticism recalling misspent youth and angsty teenage poetry à la Sylvia Plath. Similar to Bas, Donachie interrupts her often-stormy landscapes with slight geometric elements adding a pedagogical touch. A wondrously mixed bag, the artist's work reminds me of the drop-out grunge dude from high school who rarely showered but you kind of want to have sex with: not exactly an idyllic experience, but not one to be missed.

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