Aidan Koch (United States– Seattle, 1988)
"El color de la selva" – Exhibition January 11th to March 14th 2020
Watercolors, Drawings and Comics
This exhibition presents, for the first time ever, watercolour and graphite work by the multidisciplinary North American artist Aidan Koch, that she created in October 2019 at the banks of the Amazon river, in its Colombian shores. A mix of nature drawings, Impressionist or even Fauve composition sketches, contemplation exercise, and act of solidarity and encounter with the river itself (the water used is that of the very river), these works belong to a longer, continuous project of the artist as she inquiries about the possible communication processes between the human and the non-human.
El color de la selva also includes comics pieces, being Aidan Koch one of the most important names with the contemporary experimental scene within the medium of comics. These were pieces chosen that create meaningful associations with the central theme.
Tinta nos Nervos also published a book project associated to this exhibition, which shares its title.
El color de la selva is an exhibition curated by Tinta nos Nervos and the artist, coordinated with Anthropocene Campus Lisboa: Parallax, co-organized by the Centro Universitário de História das Ciências e da Tecnologia (FCUL – FCT/UNL) and Culturgest, in which Aidan Koch presented an installation piece (whose original drawings we’re presenting) between January the 6th and the 11th and where she also coordinated a seminar-workshop, “Funny Animals.”
Aidan Koch
Overview:
“Aidan Koch (1988, Seattle, WA) is a visual artist working on varied media, including ceramics and textile, but her main discipline is comics art, using either pencil or ink on paper, colours and text, exploring always the material affordances of printed matter, whether it’s a book-length project, a zine, or a newspaper piece. She also delves into installation pieces that expand the legibility of space, the spatiality of the reading experience, and the many materialities involved.
She has published many zines and short works in the U.S. and internationally. Her first solo book-length project was The Whale (Gaze Books, 2010), followed by, among others, The Blonde Woman (supported by the Xeric Foundation, 2012), the anthological Little Angels (MoMA PS1 “Greater New York” series, 2016) and After Nothing Comes (Koyama Press, 2016), and the short, stark, ominous and beautiful Daughter (Kuš, 2017).
Koch has had many exhibitions, in both collective and solo shows, in the U.S., U.K. and Germany since the early 2010s.