Untitled (Republic of Tar)
No Longer Available
Medium
Monotype & acrylic on paper, mounted to paper
Dimensions
5 x 5", framed: 11 x 14"
Cost
SOLD
Description
The pieces in this exhibition represent for me, in some ways, a returning. A return to the depiction of figure as well as a return to my own early practice as an artist in which paper figured prominently because it was cheap. The development of my figuration was dependent on the behavior of ink on paper which came to define my work as a whole through mark-making in its many forms. The papier-mâché series, Useful Things, grew out of a stint I had as an artist-in-residence at an art pottery company, trying to put figures in glaze onto slip-cast forms. With no background in pottery, I became interested in the relationship between form and what is depicted on that form; how these figures could exist across a third dimension. The tactility, relative ease of use and its association with a juvenile craft made papier-mâché, by contrast, a logical alternative to expand on these ideas with little fuss. By dispensing with the formality of conventional pottery vessels and adopting objects that surround me as an average American consumer, I imagined a backdrop for portraits of unnamed struggles and triumphs; characters celebrated and denigrated. All of which led to my consideration of the vintage commemorative postage stamp as another framework for the portrait. Created specifically for the Passion for Paper exhibition, The Stamp Act series is a series of monotypes loosely inspired by the original British law requiring early American colonists to pay for their own defense against the French and the Native threats with a tax for a standing military presence. I conceived of these 'stamps' as an open question of who gets to be on a stamp and for what qualities; a class of fantastic beings, despotic for some, perhaps, iconic for others, yet nonetheless inscrutable. It is in this mysterious connection between language, the written word, the creation of narrative and the association of form that my work endeavors to exist.
About this Artist
Kevin Auzenne
Kevin Auzenne (b. 1971, Midland Michigan, raised Tallahassee, Fl.) is a Cincinnati, Ohio based self-taught artist engaged in a broad-based practice at the intersection of narrative figuration and conceptual abstraction in which surface, texture, line and color play primary roles in the evolution of his work. Auzenne’s output, over two decades has seen experiments in a wide variety of mark-making, on numerous surfaces, employed to evoke figures, gestures, and meaning bound in fantastical, oblique narratives and subtle critiques on bias, history, injustice and race. Auzenne was recently awarded the Excellence in Painting Grant by the Ohio Arts Council, as well as being featured in the regional survey of emerging Mid-Western artists at the Cincinnati Museum of Art.
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