Black and Blue

November 2 - January 3, 2005
opening Saturday November 12 from 12 - 3 pm
Gibbs Library - Washington, Maine

Poetry reading by Maine Vets for Peace t.b.a. vfpmaine.org

This new work is a continuation of previous work created since the war in Iraq, in which I've formatted my drawings into coffin-like shapes. Within these shapes I've drawn atomic explosions from photos taken of nuclear testing in the 50's as seen in the book "100 Suns" by Michael Light (michaellight.net). The overall intention of this work is to express a sense of a weariness of past and ongoing military enterprises, thus the title "Black and Blue"

In choosing to reference these photos I found something both compelling and unexplainable in seeing beauty in something so utterly destructive as a nuclear explosion. For me art works best when it uses such beauty not to hide the truth, but rather to expose truth.

In the book each photo's sharp contrast of delicately defined atomic blossoms against the midnight black of the underexposed background gave me the initial inspiration to experiment with white tempera and black sumi ink. I Found that I could create a simple "accidental" quality through the blending, bleeding and dripping together of the two mediums, thus reflecting the natural forms inherent in both the explosions and the drawing mediums.

To this beginning I added a kind of high contrast iconography of black and white and cobalt blue, touching on themes of politics and religion, war and consumption. The clear molded "throw away" plastic serves to modulate, muddle or deform the viewer's air space in front of a part of each drawing, while it also breaks or explodes through the plane of the frame's plexi-glass. Along with the plastic are added cancelled checks, which are records of consumption, all suggesting that we need to look at our daily domestic lifestyles, question our consumption and our role as individual players in the overriding economic forces that demand and create military enterprises.

Kenny Cole May 2005

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