I Killed Kenny

The exhibition’s title invokes the vernacular of “South Park,” framing Joyce Pensato’s visual vocabulary within the cartoon’s sardonic w­it and cultural critique. Appropriating iconic American cartoon characters as her point of departure, Pensato’s gestural paintings and drawings flicker in the liminal space between menacing abstraction and comedic representation: Batman is depicted as a hollow, deliquescent mask, Bart Simpson peers through abraded skin, and Felix the Cat is rendered as a decapitated head.