FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Garry Booth Email: phoneboothgallery@gmail.com

KEVIN TONG: MECHANICAL DREAMS

Phone Booth Gallery is proud to present "Mechanical Dreams," a debut solo exhibition by Los Angeles based poster artist Kevin Tong. The exhibition opens with a reception on August 14th from 7-10pm and will consist of a selection of screen printed posters and t-shirts.  The all ages event is located at Phone Booth Gallery's exhibition space, 2533 East Broadway, Long Beach, CA 90803.   After opening night, the remaining work will be available through September 10, 2010 at the exhibition space, as well as www.phoneboothgallery.com.

Like the prolific poster work that established Kevin Tong's reputation in alt music and art scenes, his new fine art screen prints are clean and self-possessed but still experimental. The prints in Mechanical Dreams push at the boundaries of narrative in novel ways, presenting an otherworldly visual environment that marries architectural precision with imaginative sensitivity.

In World for Two, a looming woman stands either at the edge of a canyon or at the foot of a mountain. Her eyes are closed and she intently breaths in the scent of the rose she holds in her hand. She looks so human, warm and weathered that it's easy to miss the fact that her body, only covered in skin from the arms up, is built of ramshackle wood scaffolding and that the blue sky behind her has been invaded by what looks like a digitized cityscape. The seeming authenticity of the scene makes its "mechanical" qualities feel fitting, even natural.

Other posters similarly merge technology and tenderness. In Binary Heartbeat, a woman embraces a robot as both of their bodies—her fleshy one and his industrial one—disintegrate into a whimsical cascade of leaves. In Athena Ex Machina, a mechanical bird as imposing as the Trojan Horse must have been, looms outside an ornate window. Two figures, seen in silhouette, stare out at the bird with childlike awe. All through Tong's work, the man-made qualities of technology and mechanics brush up against the emotional intensities of first hand, physical experience.

Mechanical Dreams is indeed a dream, a place where the synthetic and organic co-exist in unexpected harmony, making terms like "post-human" seem beside the point. In the universe of Tong's work, technology is not about subverting or escaping the human fragility. It's about inviting new possibilities into the fragile project of being human.

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Established in 2008, Phone Booth Gallery exhibits many talented and up and coming artists from around the
globe including Handiedan, Ryan Milner, Garry Booth, Mike Knife, Bryan Schnelle, Kevin Bannister, and Kareem Rizk.
We are owned and operated out of Long Beach, CA. www.phoneboothgallery.com
For more information about this event, or future events, or to schedule an interview with any artists, please
contact Garry Booth.