Exhibitions

ISAAC MEHKI: THE KING & THE KNIGHT, AS THEY RIPEN AND ROT

Neue Welt / 507 Hagan St. November 7 - 29th (Reception: November 7 5:00pm - 8:00pm)

Isaac Mehki

Neue Welt is pleased to present The King & The Knight, As They Ripen And Rot, by Isaac Mehki, curated by Craig Drennen and THE END project space (Atlanta, GA).

“For Aristotle… hubris, unlike anger, involves conduct engaged in for the pleasure it brings. Thus, unrestraint arising from desire involves hubris, while unrestraint arising from anger does not. Accordingly, monarchs, tyrants, and the wealthy, who are freest to act with deliberate unrestraint, are most likely to engage in hubristic action…” - David Cohen, “Sexuality, Violence, and the Athenian Law of Hubris” Greece & Rome, 2nd series, vol. 38, no. 2 (October 1991).

Using Chuck Berry’s 1958 recording Johnny B. Goode as the structural foundation to choreograph both video performance and audio installation, I stage an increasingly intimate encounter between Elvis Presley and Elton John. Performing as Elvis opposite an actor portraying Elton, I place myself within a perpetual grappling match in which aggression and desire become difficult to distinguish. Using two speakers, Berry’s guitar lick governs both the vocal exchange and our choreography, making the dependence of these performers on Berry’s musical invention audible and embodied. As the King and the Knight ripen and rot, their apparent binary morphs into a mutual coherent action, without resolving the relations of power that bring them together.

Isaac Mehki is an artist based in Pittsburgh, PA and Georgia. I was born in Villa Rica, a small railroad town on the western edge of Georgia. I was raised by a family of worship leaders and pastors. I employ pseudo-biographical storytelling and intuitive world building to construct unexpected relationships within the socio-political landscape of the American South. Focused on seeing slant, I identify and disidentify material culture, recycling and rethinking encoded meaning. My experience-driven, interdisciplinary practice confronts my own social inheritance, interrogating cultural narratives to provoke catharsis.

THE END Project Space is an artist-run non-profit exhibition space in southwest Atlanta founded by in January 2019 by Craig Drennen. THE END Project Space is committed to solo presentations of new artwork by underknown artists, with an emphasis on first solo exhibitions in Atlanta.

This project is supported in part by Metro Arts: Nashville's Office of Arts + Culture.