A Look at Karl Arnaiz's "Duality"

It's me, not the artist.

Karl Arnaiz's "Duality" (currently on view at Eskinita Art Gallery) is an invitation to ponder the complexities of life and appreciate the balance that exists even in differences. This 36 x 27-inch piece in charcoal and watercolor isn't just art that looks pretty on a wall. It's art that makes you stop, think, and maybe even re-evaluate how you see the world.

Karl Arnaiz paints a meditation on death and its contrasting yet inevitable connection with life. In Duality, he explores the darker corners of the human experience. There is a certain sense of psychological imprisonment that permeates his work, as he paints a woman confined in a room with a disconnected skull floating against the wall. It shows how powerless humans are in the face of mortality and how the imminent passage of time from the woman’s face to the skull is simply nothing but a straight line, a blank, negative space on the wall, showing how nothing can obstruct death and how there is nothing that stands in its way: no kings, no gold, no wealth. All that remains are the shadows behind them, perhaps signifying the memories we leave behind.
-Dave Lock

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