'When They Pet Brain' by Kira Scerbin at King's Leap, New York

You are a complete human

To please you with intellect and fineness of brain limits who can pet us...

When They Pet Brain features five new paintings and two sculptures by Kira Scerbin and examines ways to view both the transformation and traces of alien bodies.

Three paintings on wooden board, in the shape of a girl’s head, a pumpkin, and a found farm wheel respectively, offer Scerbin a frame for her portals where witches, goblins and spirits contort themselves.  Her surfaces, much like the subject of the paintings, deceive our expectations, the edges of the boards curving to better contain the forces that are housed within them. Scerbin’s use of wax, twigs, soap, and lavender, among other materials in her sculpture, creates unfamiliar and devious forms.  Here we can peek into her world of anthropomorphic trees and fossilized remains as a means of reacquainting ourselves with our own physicality. 

Scerbin’s work allows us entrance into realms that are at once uncomfortable and unknown.  Like the sensation that she proposes in the title of the show, of literally being able to pet our own brain, Scerbin shows us new ways that we can relate, see and feel our flesh. 

Do not be afraid