Tear Drops
We eventually come to the conclusion that our world is not as we perceived or thought it would be… similar to the moment we realize, for example while one looks through a rainy window, that the image and the reality of the moment behind it is distorted.
The recurring theme throughout the raindrop series is the clarity of water, the path water has traveled to its location, and the nostalgia such images invoke. Like a film noir, these paintings confront the viewer to bring forth memories of a previous time.
These images fade into the distant past and while we may remember their shape or color, they are no longer in the present. Instead, they become part of our own distinct and individualized memory. The distorted memories as we each individually recall them are what Shay captures in this series. The reality as it happened is never exactly as we each remember it.
As memories age, we transform reality. We take details and exaggerate them to fit our needs. This very ideas of memory and perception are the key element that informs Shay Kun’s most recent body of work.
The fuzzy, off-centered shapes are just as we think they should be. As we drive along the interstate of our lives, our memories grow hazier in the distance, much like looking through the side windows of a moving car and only seeing colors without clear and definitive shapes.
Maybe we finished in third place during a race, but it was the best race we ever ran, and as such in its retelling we finished second place because the first place runner had a false start that the officials missed. We ‘should’ have been first. We aspire to be first. The transformed memory makes us first.
