NEW YORK, NY.- Hionas Gallery is presenting the solo exhibition In the Round by Alain Kirili. For this show Kirili introduces a series of new life-size and smaller pedestaled sculpture comprised solely of painted iron, each a gestural composition and calligraphic portrait in one body, with no beginning and no end. In the Round is on view from April 21 to May 21, 2016.

The fluid and improvisational motion of Kirili’s forms suggest a trembling, living subject that inhabits more space than what the sculpture’s footprint occupies. With a rhythmic pulse that stems from the floor and traces upward, the subject’s line becomes flesh and the void becomes the body.

The title for this show is an invitation to converse with the work, to enter its space and examine the circumvolution at play. As one circles the piece and navigates with the eye each sinuous twist and curve, the exchange can grow into a flirtatious dance wherein the sculpture becomes a malleable self-portrait. When viewed from this vantage point, Kirili’s work strips away our affectations in place of those binary characteristics we all possess: feminine and masculine, bravado and restraint.

The dual nature of these works—the angled and curvilinear; abstract and biomorphic; minimalist and expressionist—is further emphasized by Kirili’s choice to render each piece in black or white, lending the body a purity of form. In the Round (White)’s loose web of elegant and energetic curves behaves like a pirouette, motioning upward, while its counterpart, In the Round (Black), which stands in the gallery’s back room, carries more weight at its center and is composed using a more deliberate line that (possibly) allows the viewer to more easily delineate between form and space.

The restricted palette makes each form all the more dynamic, stressing motion over aesthetic, as if In the Round were a work in progress before the captivated eye.

Alain Kirili is a sculptor of verticality and modeling. His work emphasizes an “aesthetics of spontaneity” and seeks its formal unity through the variety of materials he employs in a quest for “organic simplicity.” Recently he has been working on the monumental aspects of sculpture in public spaces (at the campus of the University of Bourgogne in Dijon, in Paris and Grenoble). Kirili was commissioned by the Ministère de la Culture to install the sculpture of the 20th Century in the Tuileries in Paris. This is Kirili’s second time exhibiting with the gallery.