Grandma’s House
Sonia Langouev and Jake Molter
November 15th, 2024 - January 3rd, 2025
KB is proud to present our second exhibition grandma’s house, a two-person show featuring Jake Molter and Sonia Langouev.
Focusing on portraiture, the exhibition considers how gaze changes between recognizable and unrecognizable subjects. The visceral and nostalgic aesthetic of a grandparents’ house informs the show’s curation with cluttered walls of portraits and clashing mementos.
Jake Molter’s painted and stitched celebrities and their recognizability represent an obsession with human misfortune. Who could forget Winona Ryder’s notorious shoplifting scandal (Winona Ryder CCTV) or the car crash that inspired thousands of headlines (Diana Crash). These moments are sensationalized for their vulgarity but remain relevant for their subjects’ humanization. The opinions, beliefs, and judgments we hold towards these celebrities reveal our voyeuristic tendencies, and the parasocial relationships held with people only known through screens.
Sonia Langouev also explores the relationship between the audience and the subject. In Shower Curtain, the subject’s gaze confrontationally meets the viewers’. The subject is not passive to the viewers’ judgment– she’s aware of her position, yet still vulnerable in the shower. Who’s the one truly being watched, the viewer or the subject? Sonia’s work challenges passive viewership and instead encourages conscious interaction.
The question of gaze comes up in both of Jake’s and Sonia’s pieces. Jake’s saturated canvases use an attention-grabbing aesthetic similar to tabloids. His subjects’ intense moments of despair, heartbreak, loneliness, or fear feel personal to the viewer. Yet their celebrity or fictional status is a reminder of their parasocial relatability. Sonia’s pieces are soft but strong in their gaze. The subjects’ anonymity raises curiosity in the viewer, but their positional awareness allows for mutual interaction. grandma’s house questions the relationship between the subject and the audience. Throughout the show there are clusters of watercolors, paintings, and cross-stitches, all calling for different types of engagement. But all the works show subjects caught in moments of vulnerability, and the show ponders how we decide to look a little closer.
Jake Molter (b. 2002, Baltimore, MD) is a painter and multimedia artist living in Baltimore, MD whose works examine the tabloidal, gaudy, and bleak nature of scandal, celebrity, and film through the lens of the exquisite. He presents an altered cinematic universe of autopsy photography, film stills, and celebrity gossip that reflect an increasingly obsessive parasocial fixation on fame and tragedy. He graduated with a BFA in Painting from Pratt Institute in 2024. Jake creates paintings, drawings, embroideries, photographs, and films from both Brooklyn and Baltimore.
Sonia Langouev (b. 2001, Santa Cruz, CA) is an artist based in New York, working primarily in oil painting and multimedia. Her work experiments with the relationships between audience, character, and environment. Often the idea of a watcher (audience) and the watched (painting’s subject) is played with and reversed. Consent and non-consent are the underlying themes at play in many works, whether it’s a welcomed and shared moment of intimacy by the character and audience, or positioning the audience into the role of a voyeur. The pieces ask the audience to be conscious of their interaction and observation of the character. Sonia studied painting at Pratt Institute, where she graduated with a BFA in 2024.
The show will be open by appointment only until January 3rd.
For inquires please email us at kb.bkny@gmail.com
Sonia Langouev, untitled, 2024, watercolor on paper with
artist made panel, 8.5 x 10.75 inches, 27 x 22 cm
Sonia Langouev, sardines, 2024, watercolor on paper in
artist made frame engraved with abalone shells,
20 x 48 inches, 51 x 122 cm.
Sonia Langouev, untitled, 2024, watercolor on paper with
artist made panel, 10 x 7 inches, 25 x 18 cm.
Sonia Langouev, ophelia, 2024, watercolor on paper with
artist made panel, 5.75 x 12 inches, 15 x 30 cm.
Sonia Langouev, pinkface, 2024, watercolor on paper with
artist made panel, 8 x 5 inches, 20 x 13 cm.
Sonia Langouev, shower curtain, 2024, oil on
canvas, 16 x 10 inches, 41 x 25 cm.
Sonia Langouev, untitled, 2024, watercolor on paper with
artist made panel, 9 x 7 inches, 23 x 18 cm.
Sonia Langouev, braids, 2024, watercolor on paper with
artist made panel, 9 x 7 inches, 23 x 18 cm.
Jake Molter, Madonna as Sarah as Claire, 2023, oil
on panel , 16 x 12 inches, 41 x 30 cm.
Sonia Langouev, untitled (diptych), 2024, watercolor
on paper with artist made panel,
12 x 12 inches, 30 x 30 cm.
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Sonia Langouev, untitled (diptych), 2024, watercolor
on paper with artist made panel, 12 x 12 inches, 30 x 30 cm
Sonia Langouev, Red Ribbon Lunch, 2024, oil
on canvas, 20 x 20 inches, 51 x 51 cm.
Jake Molter, Funny Games 4, 2024, oil on panel,
12 x 12 inches, 30 x 30 cm.
Jake Molter, Funny Games 3, 2024, oil on panel,
12 x 12 inches, 30 x 30 cm.
Jake Molter, Funny Games 1, 2024, oil on panel,
18 x 18 inches, 74 x 74 cm.
Sonia Langouev, in waiting, 2024, oil on canvas
22 x 20 inches, 56 x 51 cm.
Jake Molter, Gina Gershon on the Phone, 2024,
oil on custom wood panel, 13 x 19 inches, 33 x 19 cm.
Jake Molter, Winona Ryder on CCTV, 2024, cross stitch
on fabric, framed: 7 x 9 inches, 18 x 23 cm.
Jake Molter, Diana Crash, 2024, cross stich on
fabric, framed: 11 x 13 inches, 28 x 33 cm.
Jake Molter, Isabelle Huppert At The Drive In, 2023,
oil on panel, 14 x 17.5 inches, 35.5 x 44.5 cm.
Jake Molter, JFK, 2024, cross stitch on fabric
framed: 7 x 9 inches, 18 x 23 cm.
Jake Molter, Jackie Kennedy at The Pool, 2024,
oil on panel, 8 x 6.5 inches, 20 x 16.5 cm.
© All images courtesy of KB NY. All rights reserved KB NY 2024.