How do we construct our reality, do we dive into the interior of our minds, or do we look to the external forces that shape our world? In The Red Room, artists Kelly Frank and Laura Nies approach consciousness from different directions, asking how our individual experiences are integrated into something greater than ourselves.
Frank moves from the outside in, drawing upon media, family photographs, and the visual language of contemporary society. Through layered imagery, her paintings untangle inherited narratives and question how collective memory, history, and social consciousness shape our beliefs and perceptions.
Nies starts from within, exploring the subconscious through dreams, vulnerability, and healing. Working intuitively and often without reference, her paintings allow narratives to unfold organically, moving fluidly between drawing, printmaking and light installation.
Both artists use painting as a way of understanding, discovering, and transforming experience. The recurring presence of red becomes a shared thread throughout the exhibition, a colour of passion, love, fear, flesh, and life itself. It speaks to the emotional intensity of the human condition while connecting two distinct artistic voices.
Drawing inspiration from David Lynch's Red Room (As seen in the series Twin Peaks), the exhibition exists as a liminal space where inner and outer realities converge. Together, the works question whether the mind is ever truly private.