Keer Tanchak:
Open, Close, Love, Repeat
12.26 is pleased to present Open, Close, Love, Repeat, a solo exhibition by Dallas-based artist Keer Tanchak.
Open, Close, Love, Repeat confirms Tanchak’s commitment and dedication to hand-cut aluminum surfaces, which dance with the slick movement of oil paints. The works highlight Tanchak’s peripheral, blurry perspective of interior spaces, mundane moments, and thrilling physical expressions.
Framing is a significant consideration for the artist who seeks to create ambiguously familiar yet unintentional forms, closely affiliated with pages in a book, but rigid and frozen like a stone. This sensibility to framing allows Tanchak to play with the tensions between contained painted spaces and the external spaces we stand in.
In Chambers, Tanchak creates a levitated, whimsical image of a fantastical bed, engulfed in soft, plush, stuffed animals. The visual plane is dissected into four chambers, much like a heart with its ventricles and atriums, yet the edge of the aluminum, along with the stark red painted frame, creates a sharp, severe, sickly, sweet expression. It’s anything but delicate.
The interior domestic environments primarily reveal kitchens, as well as a couple of other quadrants of the home, including the luscious bedroom in Rock, the electric and eclectic sitting room in Collection, and the stark, bare-bones Towel, neatly located in the gallery’s bathroom.
For Tanchak, kitchens operate as an alchemical space bringing together a magical combination of design, material, and consumption; the kitchen parallels the performative nature of the studio practice. Beets hosts a splendid palette of shape, color, and texture with its undulating brushstrokes reproducing the reflective steel cabinet doors, warm, hexagonal tiles, and an assortment of kitchen appliances, herbs, and juices.
The presence and absence of figures are prominent in this body of work. Island depicts a reality television star brushing her blonde hair after getting cross with a male co-star. Her pouty lips and aggressive use of a hairbrush create a strikingly relatable image. In Hello Elle, we see the portrait of a figure in anticipation, surrounded by the beckoning motif of a text message framing her aura.
Tanchak returned to crafting paper doll silhouettes, utilizing them as collage tools in the studio. These puppet-like shadow figures populate the gallery as voided subjects painted in black and brown. Shoulders presents an art dealer in a peplum top, shrugging with upheld elbows, framed in an ovum-like form. In Venus, a voided figure grabs his head in shock, exhibiting what’s known as Stendhal Syndrome, a psychosomatic condition experienced by individuals exposed to visual art, in this case, a master work by Botticelli.
Keer Tanchak (b. 1977, North Vancouver, BC, Canada) lives and works in Dallas, TX. Tanchak received her MFA in 2003 from the School of the Arts Institute of Chicago and her BFA in 2000 at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec. Tanchak has presented solo exhibitions with JDJ | Tribeca, New York, NY (2023); Old Jail Art Center, Albany, TX (2023); 12.26, Dallas, TX (2023, 2021, 2020); Best Western, Santa Fe, NM (2022); Conduit Gallery, Dallas, TX (2019); Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, TX (2017); among others. She has been in group exhibitions Secrist | Beach, Chicago, IL (2025); Hashimoto Contemporary, Los Angeles, CA (2023); Sweet Pass Sculpture Park, Dallas, TX (2023), NorthPark Center, Dallas, TX (2023); Kirk Hopper Fine Arts, Dallas, TX (2023); Fort Worth Contemporary Arts, Fort Worth, TX (2023), 12.26, Dallas, TX (2020); among others.
Open, Close, Love, Repeat confirms Tanchak’s commitment and dedication to hand-cut aluminum surfaces, which dance with the slick movement of oil paints. The works highlight Tanchak’s peripheral, blurry perspective of interior spaces, mundane moments, and thrilling physical expressions.
Framing is a significant consideration for the artist who seeks to create ambiguously familiar yet unintentional forms, closely affiliated with pages in a book, but rigid and frozen like a stone. This sensibility to framing allows Tanchak to play with the tensions between contained painted spaces and the external spaces we stand in.
In Chambers, Tanchak creates a levitated, whimsical image of a fantastical bed, engulfed in soft, plush, stuffed animals. The visual plane is dissected into four chambers, much like a heart with its ventricles and atriums, yet the edge of the aluminum, along with the stark red painted frame, creates a sharp, severe, sickly, sweet expression. It’s anything but delicate.
The interior domestic environments primarily reveal kitchens, as well as a couple of other quadrants of the home, including the luscious bedroom in Rock, the electric and eclectic sitting room in Collection, and the stark, bare-bones Towel, neatly located in the gallery’s bathroom.
For Tanchak, kitchens operate as an alchemical space bringing together a magical combination of design, material, and consumption; the kitchen parallels the performative nature of the studio practice. Beets hosts a splendid palette of shape, color, and texture with its undulating brushstrokes reproducing the reflective steel cabinet doors, warm, hexagonal tiles, and an assortment of kitchen appliances, herbs, and juices.
The presence and absence of figures are prominent in this body of work. Island depicts a reality television star brushing her blonde hair after getting cross with a male co-star. Her pouty lips and aggressive use of a hairbrush create a strikingly relatable image. In Hello Elle, we see the portrait of a figure in anticipation, surrounded by the beckoning motif of a text message framing her aura.
Tanchak returned to crafting paper doll silhouettes, utilizing them as collage tools in the studio. These puppet-like shadow figures populate the gallery as voided subjects painted in black and brown. Shoulders presents an art dealer in a peplum top, shrugging with upheld elbows, framed in an ovum-like form. In Venus, a voided figure grabs his head in shock, exhibiting what’s known as Stendhal Syndrome, a psychosomatic condition experienced by individuals exposed to visual art, in this case, a master work by Botticelli.
Keer Tanchak (b. 1977, North Vancouver, BC, Canada) lives and works in Dallas, TX. Tanchak received her MFA in 2003 from the School of the Arts Institute of Chicago and her BFA in 2000 at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec. Tanchak has presented solo exhibitions with JDJ | Tribeca, New York, NY (2023); Old Jail Art Center, Albany, TX (2023); 12.26, Dallas, TX (2023, 2021, 2020); Best Western, Santa Fe, NM (2022); Conduit Gallery, Dallas, TX (2019); Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, TX (2017); among others. She has been in group exhibitions Secrist | Beach, Chicago, IL (2025); Hashimoto Contemporary, Los Angeles, CA (2023); Sweet Pass Sculpture Park, Dallas, TX (2023), NorthPark Center, Dallas, TX (2023); Kirk Hopper Fine Arts, Dallas, TX (2023); Fort Worth Contemporary Arts, Fort Worth, TX (2023), 12.26, Dallas, TX (2020); among others.
