The small hours are defined as the hours in the early morning when insomniacs and natural night owls go off duty, passing the baton to the early birds.
Four artists, all connected by past residency in New York City, have been exploring this idea, and their individual collections are “Small Hours,” an art exhibit at the KiMo Theater Art Gallery that will be up until July 23rd.
The artists created pieces inspired by the hours that separate night and day, and there is a visual connection between their offerings.
Upon entering the intimate space that neighbors the theater, the eye is first drawn to Kenneth Fernandez’s contribution.
His construction cones may seem an odd choice for the sole focus of an art piece, but this is not to say the entertaining pieces have no aesthetic value.
Fernandez said he thought about the nights he and his friends spent wandering the city streets, abusing construction zones they found in their path.
“My idea was to kind of give the cones back a little bit of dignity,” he said. “So I started going around late at night taking photographs of cones and then I would give them something that they could possibly dream or aspire to.”
He said he didn’t want the cones “doing taxes,” so the cones innocently play hopscotch, make snowmen and play jump rope.
Just up the wall are John Myers’ pieces. Myers’ is a more sober take on the theme. His images (acrylic and gold leaf on canvas) focus on a single subject as well — a female with pearly gray skin and her eyes cast away from the viewer.
The color tones, as well as the subject’s expression, betray a sense of vulnerability, which Myers described as the feeling of solitude he experiences working into the dawn.
“It’s a very alone time, but it can also be magic time,” Myers said. “That’s what I was trying to communicate — this magic.”
Contrasting with the dewy skin colors are metallic silver, gold and blues, most notably in “Fractal Eye.”
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“I wanted to put a fractal in the eyeball, almost like you’re wired. You’re wide awake, it’s 4 a.m.,” he said. “Then I thought of someone sleeping, like right before dawn. Those are what came to me right away.”
Lito Vales’ work is displayed on the far side of the gallery and consists of altered photographs and oil on paper.
The linseed-oil and gouache-on-color photographs possess a very different emotive quality than the oil-on-paper portraits.
Vales uses long, lean strokes of paint with only the living features of the photos peeking through the paint. His style manifests the chaos of city life.
Jahneiah Lee Duran also chose to address tributes to the past.
“The Gift of Prayer” is an interplay of light and dark conveying her struggle to balance what she associates with the opposing times of day. The small hours have been a time when Duran struggled with the loss of her mother last April.
“Initially I started thinking about very shady things because I lived in Brooklyn for nine years and the city for 12,” she said. “It’s very deep and spiritual and serious.”
