A vivid mixed-media composition featuring a serpentine creature with green scaled body, prominent eye, and red fanged mouth against a bright orange background scattered with small stars. The right side transitions to intricate black line patterns and geometric designs on a light ground, creating a dynamic contrast between the boldly colored left half and the densely patterned right half.

primal as I wanna be

Corey Goering

10/24/2014 – 12/6/2014

Press Release (PDF)

Corey Goering's latest collection of paintings and drawings, primal as I wanna be, are intense works on paper filled with anxiety and introspective wonder. Viewers are immediately brought into a world informed by childhood drawings and 70's television graphics, complete with vibrant, unnatural color, energized parades of lines, and intricate patterns of simple imagery filling the space with a restless, exciting pulse.

The labyrinthine imagery hints at the anxieties filling the drawings. Serpentine lines come together to form images of cartoon disease and violence, implying an ever present threat to the childlike nature of the work and the tones of nurturing parenthood, innocence and play. Compulsive behaviors fill the backgrounds with repeated pattern, creating neurotic environments filled with ambiguous sexuality and primitive symbols from a religion yet to exist. The colorful remnants of the artist's youth are reused not to signal regret, but stand as vestigial elements that one holds onto to steer them through the hazards of the present.

Corey Goering, born 1973 Kingman, Kansas, studied Printmaking at the Kansas City Art Institute. He works in a studio from his home in Overland Park, Kansas that he shares with his wife and two children. He has worked with various artist collectives and has been included in group shows around the country including the Flux Factory in New York, the Receiver Gallery in San Francisco, and Big Medium in Austin, Texas. The upcoming show, in October, marks his first ever solo exhibition.

Exhibition Images ()

  • Three blue pyramids with yellow lightning bolts and circular protrusions sit on a polished concrete floor in a minimalist gallery space, while three yellow organic forms with red dripping elements hang on the white wall above, evoking playful yet unsettling imagery reminiscent of 1970s cartoon aesthetics.
  • Two blue pyramidal sculptures with yellow lightning bolt spires stand on a polished concrete floor in a gallery space, accompanied by three framed drawings on the white wall behind them featuring intricate line work and symbolic imagery.
  • Two large blue pyramidal structures with grid patterns sit on a polished concrete floor beneath hanging yellow and red sculptural forms dripping downward. Lightning bolt shapes in yellow emerge from the pyramids' tops, creating a dynamic, cartoonish composition in a minimalist gallery space with floor-to-ceiling windows.
A vivid mixed-media composition featuring a serpentine creature with green scaled body, prominent eye, and red fanged mouth against a bright orange background scattered with small stars. The right side transitions to intricate black line patterns and geometric designs on a light ground, creating a dynamic contrast between the boldly colored left half and the densely patterned right half.

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