First Friday @ Arch Enemy Arts
Arch Enemy Arts gallery and boutique welcomes art lovers to our First Friday event on July 7, 2023 from 5PM - 9PM at 109 Arch Street in Old City! Free and open to the public, come celebrate the dramatic and varied new collections we have on display, including three solo features by artists kEda Gomes, Michael Reedy, and S.V. Williams, as well as a new group exhibition titled “NO PLACE LIKE…” Plus, you still have a chance to check out our gorgeous exhibition of GRAPHITE, which includes over forty works from our eleven-year archives dedicated to pencil and works on paper.
kEda Gomes is a South African artist living and working in Portugal. Her illustrative work, expressed through a range of media, explores themes of identity, exclusion, childhood, and politics through recurring adolescent characters. Gomes studied at KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa which has influenced her work greatly. Her work has been featured in numerous publications, and she creates one-of-a-kind toys for galleries like Clutter Gallery in NYC.
Michael Reedy is an internationally renowned artist whose striking, signature style explores shifting themes related to life, death, and the human condition, and his work pulls from a range of historical artistic traditions–from figurative realism, anatomical illustration, and hyperrealism to op-art and geometric abstraction. Reedy attended undergraduate school at North Central College and obtained his MFA in painting from Northern Illinois University in 2000. He currently teaches 2D Media at Eastern Michigan University.
S.V. Williams is known for his unique hybrid creature artworks, mixing organic and mechanical forms in ways that are inventive and fantastical. Williams’ deftly detailed hand allows viewers to explore the depths of a psychedelic, subterranean world where surreal yet tightly rendered forms undulate and emerge from chiaroscuro darkness. A self-taught artist based in Sacramento, Williams is inspired by sci-fi, horror films, comics, and magazines as well as the street art/graffiti scenes of the West Coast where he has painted a number of prominent murals.
No Place Like… is a group exhibition exploring the vast and vacillating concept of home in all of its forms. From international artists and expats to local well-knowns and home-growns, we asked artists from all over the world: What moors them? What memories and mythologies tie them to–or free them from–that sense of belonging for which we all strive? Alternatively, what windows can we peer into? What doors can we enter? What times, spaces, and places do others call home?
