February 8, 2024
Katrien De Blauwer, Ken Graves, and Kensuke Koike
Fragmented Lucidity: The Art of Collage and Photomontage
Rose Gallery
December 9, 2023 - February 17, 2024
Fragmented Lucidity: Katrien De Blauwer (l), Kensuke Koike (c), Ken Graves (r)
Defined as a technique of assemblage to create a new whole, collage most often refers to visual works. It has a rich political, as well as aesthetic history. When the term collage or photomontage is mentioned, numerous historical artists and movements come to mind: Hanna Hoch (Dada), John Heartfield (German political montage), Picasso, Braque (Cubism) and El Lissitzky (Constructivism). Fragmented Lucidity: The Art of Collage and Photomontage at Rose Gallery features work by Katrien De Blauwer, Ken Graves and Kensuke Koike, three contemporary artists who excel in the making of collages in unique and unexpected ways.
Self described as a "photographer without a camera," Katrien De Blauwer is a Belguim based artist who creates small-scale collages that feel as if they come from another time. She often juxtaposes a few fragments culled from old magazines and newspapers. These are casually cut, though not with straight lines, and often contain large areas of a single color. In Forces 4 (2022), for example, a clipping that features the top of the head of a woman with brown hair, shot against a deep orange ground is placed below a black and white photograph of rolling waves in a turbulent sea. The top of the collage is a rough edge of cardboard or backing that suggests a mountainous shoreline. Many of De Blauwer's collages feature images of women, in some instances clothed, in others nude but never overtly sexual. Rather, she uses the human body as a compositional device similarly to the way she incorporates objects, as well as large areas of color. Each fragment is a formal, design element that may also trigger memories through juxtaposition. Single Cuts 133 (2018) is a collage made up of three photographic sections bordered by light backing paper. In this image, De Blauwer crops a black and white magazine or book photograph of a woman wearing sunglasses whose arm rises up toward the top of her head to block the sun. She cuts and rearranges it so the upper torso is positioned above the top of her head. Her face is missing entirely from the collage.
The cutting and repositioning of body parts and faces is also a methodology for the Japanese artist Kensuke Koike. Koike often begins with found vintage photographs like old studio portraits or antique cartes de visites and carefully removes aspects of the scene or the people depicted within the image and replaces the extracted elements with different parts taken from the same original. Say Cheese (2020) is a photograph of man and woman about to embrace: their lips approach one another's. Koike has removed a rectangular section of the image around the mouths of both the man and woman, switching their lips. The result is unsettling and absurd. In Traveler (2020), Koike cuts away the outlines of two overlapping squares that intersect the face and shoulders of a seated man from a vintage sepia toned portrait. He turns each square 90 degrees (one clockwise, the other counter clockwise) before re-inserting them to transform a banal portrait into an abstraction. The splitting of a head or full body in half or thirds, or the displacement of certain facial features are alterations that Koike employs in many of his collages. It is hard to believe that such seemingly simple maneuvers would so significantly alter the tenor of the image but they do so in striking ways. His surrealist images have lasting power.
Ken Graves' witty and often ironic collages draw from a variety of source material ranging from found photographs to magazine images. Through inventive compilation and juxtaposition, each work becomes a self contained narrative that offers new interpretations of pop culture. The collages on view were created between 1976 and 2015. The earliest image — Putting Them Out of Their Misery (1976) is a small black and white work, just over 3.5 x 4 inches depicting a range of mangled hard-back chairs suspended from the ceiling of a well lit living room. In the foreground, a man sprays one of the chairs from a can, suggesting that either the spraying or hanging will put the chair "out of its misery." The Home Movies (1986) is a color collage of elderly, people in fancy dress who are intently watching a movie being shown in their home. The screen is placed on a woven rug and takes up the lower half of the composition. Facing the viewer, the back-side of the screen transparently shows a heavily tattooed man from behind. Squash (2011) is a surreal montage in which a seated man wearing a suit appears to be steering a large orange squash from which golden drapery tumbles. Graves' collages allow for playful free association where the viewer can invent whatever narrative they choose from disparate elements. While collage has come in and out of vogue over the years, these three artists illustrate the various ways it continues to resonate and remains a go-to-medium.
Fragmented Lucidity: The Art of Collage and Photomontage
Rose Gallery
December 9, 2023 - February 17, 2024
Fragmented Lucidity: Katrien De Blauwer (l), Kensuke Koike (c), Ken Graves (r)
Defined as a technique of assemblage to create a new whole, collage most often refers to visual works. It has a rich political, as well as aesthetic history. When the term collage or photomontage is mentioned, numerous historical artists and movements come to mind: Hanna Hoch (Dada), John Heartfield (German political montage), Picasso, Braque (Cubism) and El Lissitzky (Constructivism). Fragmented Lucidity: The Art of Collage and Photomontage at Rose Gallery features work by Katrien De Blauwer, Ken Graves and Kensuke Koike, three contemporary artists who excel in the making of collages in unique and unexpected ways.
Self described as a "photographer without a camera," Katrien De Blauwer is a Belguim based artist who creates small-scale collages that feel as if they come from another time. She often juxtaposes a few fragments culled from old magazines and newspapers. These are casually cut, though not with straight lines, and often contain large areas of a single color. In Forces 4 (2022), for example, a clipping that features the top of the head of a woman with brown hair, shot against a deep orange ground is placed below a black and white photograph of rolling waves in a turbulent sea. The top of the collage is a rough edge of cardboard or backing that suggests a mountainous shoreline. Many of De Blauwer's collages feature images of women, in some instances clothed, in others nude but never overtly sexual. Rather, she uses the human body as a compositional device similarly to the way she incorporates objects, as well as large areas of color. Each fragment is a formal, design element that may also trigger memories through juxtaposition. Single Cuts 133 (2018) is a collage made up of three photographic sections bordered by light backing paper. In this image, De Blauwer crops a black and white magazine or book photograph of a woman wearing sunglasses whose arm rises up toward the top of her head to block the sun. She cuts and rearranges it so the upper torso is positioned above the top of her head. Her face is missing entirely from the collage.
The cutting and repositioning of body parts and faces is also a methodology for the Japanese artist Kensuke Koike. Koike often begins with found vintage photographs like old studio portraits or antique cartes de visites and carefully removes aspects of the scene or the people depicted within the image and replaces the extracted elements with different parts taken from the same original. Say Cheese (2020) is a photograph of man and woman about to embrace: their lips approach one another's. Koike has removed a rectangular section of the image around the mouths of both the man and woman, switching their lips. The result is unsettling and absurd. In Traveler (2020), Koike cuts away the outlines of two overlapping squares that intersect the face and shoulders of a seated man from a vintage sepia toned portrait. He turns each square 90 degrees (one clockwise, the other counter clockwise) before re-inserting them to transform a banal portrait into an abstraction. The splitting of a head or full body in half or thirds, or the displacement of certain facial features are alterations that Koike employs in many of his collages. It is hard to believe that such seemingly simple maneuvers would so significantly alter the tenor of the image but they do so in striking ways. His surrealist images have lasting power.
Ken Graves' witty and often ironic collages draw from a variety of source material ranging from found photographs to magazine images. Through inventive compilation and juxtaposition, each work becomes a self contained narrative that offers new interpretations of pop culture. The collages on view were created between 1976 and 2015. The earliest image — Putting Them Out of Their Misery (1976) is a small black and white work, just over 3.5 x 4 inches depicting a range of mangled hard-back chairs suspended from the ceiling of a well lit living room. In the foreground, a man sprays one of the chairs from a can, suggesting that either the spraying or hanging will put the chair "out of its misery." The Home Movies (1986) is a color collage of elderly, people in fancy dress who are intently watching a movie being shown in their home. The screen is placed on a woven rug and takes up the lower half of the composition. Facing the viewer, the back-side of the screen transparently shows a heavily tattooed man from behind. Squash (2011) is a surreal montage in which a seated man wearing a suit appears to be steering a large orange squash from which golden drapery tumbles. Graves' collages allow for playful free association where the viewer can invent whatever narrative they choose from disparate elements. While collage has come in and out of vogue over the years, these three artists illustrate the various ways it continues to resonate and remains a go-to-medium.