Manifestos
Created on Monhegan Island
This series, which I call “Manifestos”, is part of ongoing explorations into language as visual image and the role of the artist as visionary, soothsayer and alleged presenter of "truth through beauty". The work assumes that the viewer accepts some or all of these notions, or variations thereof and attempts to challenge the viewer to question their position in this relationship. Each drawing began with a "charged" word which I then expounded upon in both an authoritative and stream of consciousness-like voice, creating enough words to fill the sheet of paper that I would be drawing on. I felt that despite my disregard for accuracy in building my thesis, I was finding, reflecting upon and speaking in a way that might hold a certain truth-like quality and that anyone who might read them might experience a variety of feelings from enlightenment to unease to humor to outright incredulity, around otherwise socially charged subjects. Aesthetically they have been created to be dense textures, made as a way of delaying access to the content of the language, which might only be discovered after much labor. Additionally there are two secondary distractions in the form of; circled word discoveries, much like word search puzzles and meandering tendrils drawn within the negative space of the text, both devices there to guide the eye compositionally in order to maintain the drawing’s integrity as visual art.
Kenny Cole
July 2010
This series, which I call “Manifestos”, is part of ongoing explorations into language as visual image and the role of the artist as visionary, soothsayer and alleged presenter of "truth through beauty". The work assumes that the viewer accepts some or all of these notions, or variations thereof and attempts to challenge the viewer to question their position in this relationship. Each drawing began with a "charged" word which I then expounded upon in both an authoritative and stream of consciousness-like voice, creating enough words to fill the sheet of paper that I would be drawing on. I felt that despite my disregard for accuracy in building my thesis, I was finding, reflecting upon and speaking in a way that might hold a certain truth-like quality and that anyone who might read them might experience a variety of feelings from enlightenment to unease to humor to outright incredulity, around otherwise socially charged subjects. Aesthetically they have been created to be dense textures, made as a way of delaying access to the content of the language, which might only be discovered after much labor. Additionally there are two secondary distractions in the form of; circled word discoveries, much like word search puzzles and meandering tendrils drawn within the negative space of the text, both devices there to guide the eye compositionally in order to maintain the drawing’s integrity as visual art.
Kenny Cole
July 2010
