[Don't] Wake Up

Oil on canvas, 2023. Artist's note "In [Don’t] Wake Up, Kamoy introduces the idea of the duality of identity as explored within the Platonic framework of anamnesis. On a luxurious, vacation-home-style balcony set against bright hues and a calm sea, we find the applehead in two simultaneous moments of existence – reclining at ease and hanging in distress. The two figures are positioned on a diagonal, relatively close to one another and inhabiting the same space. This positioning speaks to the ease with which one oscillates between different incarnations of the self. These conflicting manifestations of being coexist and are never quite lost – while one is brought to consciousness, the other remains latently there within. The piece borrows Gustave Caillebotte’s use of perspective to shroud the painting with a sense of infinite possibility as one turns inward to confront the true knowledge of being."