Capsule is pleased to present Gigas, Kyle Coniglio's (b. 1988 in New Jersey, USA) first solo exhibition at the gallery. Through a new body of paintings and drawings, the artist constructs a fictional terrain where beauty and menace, desire and tenderness coexist. Populated by colossal giants, frail humans, and atmospheric landscapes, this imagined universe reflects on desire, power, and the fragile resilience of those who live beneath their shadow.
This group of works marks a new direction where the artist shifts away from direct depiction of vulnerable male bodies that characterized his earlier works, instead portraying the world they inhabit and revealing the forces that give rise to their fragility. The giants’ exaggerated physiques and commanding presence make them immediately alluring, yet they also personify looming forces whose scale overwhelms the landscape they occupy. Rather than heroic protagonists, the giants function as avatars of insatiable consumption. They embody systems that seduce through spectacle while leaving exhaustion and ruin in their wake, their idealized bodies reflecting contemporary fantasies of power, physical perfection, and masculine dominance.
In Gigas 1 (all works 2026), a towering male figure emerges from a fiery landscape. His body extends beyond the canvas, dwarfing the chopped tree trunk in the foreground and the low horizon behind him. He extends one oversized hand toward the viewer–a gesture oscillating between invitation and intimidation–while holding a small object to his mouth with the other, as though idly savoring or toying with it. The relaxed demeanor and idealized physique render him charismatic. The viewer is captivated by his beauty even while becoming acutely aware of their own vulnerability. It is precisely this coexistence of temptation and quiet menace that anchors the emotional logic of the Gigas series.
While the figure in Gigas 1 projects an undercurrent of threat with his expressive gesture and the alarming vermilion palette, the giant in Gigas 2 appears unexpectedly humanized and relatable. The dominating face of the young man, suffused with luminous yellow and hints of phosphorescent green, emerges softly from a hazy ground. His familiar features, downcast eyes, gentle expression, and a trace of a smile suggest emotional openness, as though he is caught in a moment of conversation. This otherwise amiable portrait is disrupted by a second, diminutive figure standing alone in the lower right corner. Although existing on drastically different scales of reality, the two figures are joined by their gaze, leaving it ambiguous whether the lonesome human is confronting or dreaming of the celestial face above. Domination need not be overtly violent; it often disguises itself as something affable and quotidian.
Landscape has become an increasingly important element in Coniglio's practice since his relocation to New York's Hudson Valley, home of the nineteenth-century Hudson River School. Echoing that tradition's sensitivity to atmosphere, light, and the sublime, his landscapes are less descriptions of a specific place than psychological terrains shaped by contemporary anxieties. Rather than defining forms through sharp contours, Coniglio builds his image with soft transitions and fluid layers of paint, allowing atmosphere and color to carry much of the emotional weight. The monumental bodies appear strangely weightless, suspended between apparition and physical substance. Smoky oranges, dusty pinks, pale blues, olive greens, and misty grays recur throughout the exhibition, creating a world suspended between dawn and dusk, dream and aftermath.
Miasma Mountains was created whilst a haze of wildfire smoke veiled the sky in northern America. The calamity–increasingly frequent and destructive in recent years–tints the scene with an otherworldly violet hue. An apocalyptic orange sun hangs low above the mountains, while the haunting shadow of a figure is silhouetted in the background. The painting suggests an environment irrevocably altered by relentless extraction and consumption. In Reprise and In the Silent Blue, solitary figures appear poised in moments of fatigue and introspection. Although the giants are absent, their presence is nonetheless felt.
The paintings are punctuated by graphite-and-chalk drawings. Composed through sophisticated tonal gradations and delicate marks, a small group of men in nature struggles to move a mirrored disco ball—a recurring motif in the exhibition that evokes queer joy, nostalgic glamour, optimism, and resilience. At once a burdensome object and a sacred relic, the disco ball becomes a fragile beacon carried through and preserved within an uncertain world.
Across the exhibition, Coniglio constructs an oneiric allegory of helplessly disoriented mortals and uncannily humanized giants, inviting the viewer to reflect on the seductive yet crushing forces that shape our physical and emotional realms, and how, ultimately, these forces take the shape of our own fantasies and are born from human nature.
