Simon Preston Gallery is pleased to present Marco Rios and Kara Tanaka in their first two-person exhibition in New York, Mad Amour, which opens to the public on Wednesday, April 30, and runs until Wednesday, June 11.

Marco Rios adopts unconventional materials and hyperbolic gesture to create hybrid sculptures that mine an intimate personal psychology. He refers to his body of work as ‘disruptions’, a word historically used to describe melancholia and anxiety, prior to the term ‘depression’ being introduced in 1600s. He employs humor and slapstick to explore more solemn issues of failure, death, desire and despair. In Moving Equilibrium, the struggle to become emotionally centered is made real in the form of a giant yellow torpedo level. The Nightmare is based on the likeness of the artist as a child, fabricated entirely from the anti-depressant drug Paxil. Cast in stainless steel are his favorite cuts of meat from favorite steakhouses. By assuming literary, filmic and art historical guises, he conceals an acutely personal narrative.

Kara Tanaka’s solitary sculpture investigates the shattering moment of the sublime that comes with the collision of most poetic and violent assaults on the consciousness. Crushed by the Hammer of the Sun employs mechanical apparatus to replicate the spiritual ecstasy of a whirling dervish, which, during a recurring sequence, transforms into the monstrous form of an imaginary apocalypse. Kara’s diverse artistic practice is derived from an interest in myth, poetry and transcendence. Her sculptures each act as an experiment toward detachment and move toward an enlightened, evolved state of being.

Marco Rios lives and works in Los Angeles. He graduated in 2006 from University of California, Irvine. Kara Tanaka lives and works in Los Angeles. She is a graduate of University of California, Irvine and Goldsmiths College, London. She will finish her MFA at the California Institute of the Arts, in Valencia, CA in May. They will both show this year at the California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA.