Most pictures hand you a face to look at. This one turns everybody away and gives the whole moment to a pair of clippers.
An empty barber’s shop. Grey walls, grey floor, the chair sitting there with nobody in it. Then colour erupts out of the clippers — orange, magenta, cyan, yellow — poured and sprayed, dripping down, overspray hanging in the air where a head should be.
Watch which way the colour goes
It leaves. Kai never lets the burst wrap around the subject or decorate it. It travels away from the chair, out of the frame, gone. That is the joke and the point at once: the shop is silent, everyone has left, and the loudest thing in the room is the tool that shaped them. Charlotte, one of our critics, put it plainly — “the explosive color burst from the clippers captivates and contrasts beautifully with the grayscale environment.”
Look closer at the edges too. Every grey line is razor sharp, drawn with a ruler’s patience. Every drop of colour is loose and wet and out of control. Neither one backs down. That collision is the whole of Kai’s GREY BURST work: build the grey world exactly, then let one thing go.
Once it is up
It reads from across a room, which makes it good over a desk, in a hallway, above the spot where people put their keys down. Energy with no slogan on it. Anyone who has ever sat in that chair and heard the room go quiet afterwards gets it in about two seconds.
Getting it on your wall
A high quality print of a digital artwork on museum-grade archival matte paper. Matte means no glare, so the greys stay flat and honest and the colour stays drawn rather than shiny. Printed edge to edge with no white border — it looks right pinned up bare, or drops straight into a frame you already own. It arrives rolled in a tube, made to order, so nobody on your street has this one.
The 20×16 inch (50.8 x 40.6 cm) is the one most people take, at $49. There is a smaller 14×11 for a tight bit of wall and a 24×18 if you want it to run the room. Free shipping in the continental US.
One honest thing
This is loud in one spot and cold everywhere else. If you like art that soothes, this will not. If you like a room with a bit of a pulse in it, take it home — or go and see the rest of Kai’s bursts first, and follow him if you want to catch the next one before the rest of us.
One is a piece. Two is a set. Three is a collection.
Almost nobody stops at one. A second work by the same hand turns a wall into a pairing. A third turns it into something you chose rather than something you bought. There are 6 other works by Kai Reynolds available.
Optimism Through Downpour – Kai Reynolds | Digital Download$19
Number Seventeen Erupting – Kai Reynolds | Fine Art Print Price range: $129 through $229
Ignition Climbing Slow – Kai Reynolds | Digital Download$19
Exit Erupting Orange – Kai Reynolds | Fine Art Print Price range: $129 through $229
Wing Unfolding Fuchsia – Kai Reynolds | Fine Art Print Price range: $29 through $69
Lamp Splitting Rain – Kai Reynolds | Fine Art Print Price range: $129 through $229
