Closer

New Work by Kelly Tunstall + Ferris Plock

4/1/17 - 4/22/17

SPOKE SF is pleased to present Closer, a two person exhibition by San Francisco-based artists Kelly Tunstall and Ferris Plock, known as the artist collective KeFe. Featuring new works conceived during their residency at the renowned de Young Museum, the artist duo explore the space between interpersonal comfort zones and routine. Tunstall and Plock’s richly detailed, collaborative universe comes to life in new large scale panels, colorful paintings and fantastical drawings.

KeFe use their artistic practice as a means to process their environment, be it personal or the world at large. The married artist duo’s vibrant large-scale paintings are a layered, collaborative conversation between two painters, partners, parents, and represent the daily interactions and routines of their life. The couple examine their insular bubbles in relation to the shifting and transient nature of the Bay Area, how groups and individuals collide and gather with one another, and their own constantly evolving familial bubble.

With established independent practices of their own, Tunstall and Plock have been creatively colluding for over 10 years. Their storybook universe is populated by Plock’s samurai tigers and houses with teeth communing with Tunstall’s chic mermaids and well- healed beasties. Each vignette contained within the paintings are an independent conversation among crocodiles and octopi-ladies. Be it a ukulele playing sailor aboard a cargo ship, a colorfully festooned anthropomorphic house or the viewer, each story asks us to get closer.