Kevin
Clarke founded Million Fishes, a Mission District
based artist live work collective in November
2003. The group’s goal is to have 14 people
of varying interests and talents influence each
others work and collaborate on group projects.
Kevin received his BFA in painting, drawing with
a focus on conceptual wood working from the California
College of the Arts. He was born in Berkeley California
in 1974.
The
Small Gallery
The
Small Gallery challenges viewers’ conception
of ‘appropriate’ venues for viewing
art. The Small Gallery is placed on the sidewalk
in front of the established galleries of 49 Geary
St., San Francisco, during their collective opening
night, once a month. Although the initial target
audience has been art enthusiasts and patrons,
by placing it on the street it makes it accessible
to all who walk by. The Small Gallery is a populist
gesture within fine art’s elitist culture.
It makes fun of its smallness while appealing
to consumers of fine art and the general public
to notice the underrepresented. While exposing
the concept of a gallery for what it is - a room
with a title, it blurs the lines between gallery
owner and artist, and disassembles the division
between art and gallery.
The
Small Gallery is a small room on pylons that looks
honest, raw, and unrefined from the outside using
materials that display the true nature of its
construction and the ‘hidden’ aesthetic
beauty of what makes our surroundings. The rough
outside is contrasted by the seemingly normal
inside. It is normal but small. Small is not to
be confused with miniature. The baseboards and
the floorboards are normal size for a room; it
is just the size of the room that has been reduced.
To see the inside of the gallery the viewer must
walk up a set of wooden blocks, elevating herself
off the ground to then look down upon the art
within the room. The process of climbing the wooden
blocks, to then peer down into the gallery, both
honors and condescends upon this unorthodox venue
for art.
The
materials are found old growth Douglas Fir 2x4’s,
found lathe, plaster, found oak flooring, and
found Victorian style baseboards. The dimensions
are approximately 6’2” x 42”
x 36”.
Abstract
Place-meants
The
'place' in the Abstract Place-meants series is
never quite terra firma, but it is not terra incognita
either- they are ethereal spaces that could be
in water or floating in air, mist or fog. My goal
is to create a space with perspective and depth
that has thick impasto marks laying on top of,
and interacting with, the interior space of the
painting. I want these marks to play between figuration
and abstraction. They should be both flat and
deep, sometimes microscopic and laying atop our
lens like a rice shaped protozoa, or flat and
graphic scrawled across the picture plane like
a ledger line. Their function is to both separate
and join the plane of the picture with the illusion
behind it.
I
am playing with the idea that there are languages
in painting and that certain types of marks have
a 'symbol-ness'. I don't believe that there can
be a direct quote from an era or an artist or
a movement. 'There is no essential meaning' as
Derrida would say - it is constantly being deferred
as time and context destroy and reinvent the conceptual
envelope of a symbol. So I am adding to the conceptual
envelope of two ideas that have a symbol-ness.
The two symbols I am playing with are romantic
illusionism, and also, the 'expressionist' mark.
I'm confronting the two modes of rendering, but
definitely not invalidating either concept. While
historically both modes of rendering independently
'emphasizes passion rather than reason, and imagination
and intuition rather than logic...', by combining
the two they limit each from being a 'full expression
of the emotions, or spontaneous action. By layering
the two elements there is a restraint and order
that puts the location of these paintings well
beyond nature or pure formalism into the place
of juxtaposition.
By
Simply calling them types, giving them a category,
I am acknowledging their status within a spectrum
of historical usages. I am hoping the 'expressionist'
mark sinks just below the radar of a language,
and the background rises above the genre of landscape.
There are no unit's here, but the Marks come closer
to unit-ness than the space behind. They are conceptually
more of a unit and look like a physically contained
object as well. But the glossy windowpane surface
they rest upon suggest another type of exclusive
space- they are trapped illusions sealed, reflective
and flat. While I am attempting to undermine both
the pictorial and the expressive by including
aspects of each within the other, they are in
service of discrediting the other's reality by
appearing to be integrated within it, and by sharing
qualities of each other. The impasto marks appear
to be modeled three dimensionally instead of,
for example, just being a monochromatic blob.
And on close inspection the background has some
evidence of a brush's lingering path.
In
the Abstract Place-meants there is a narrative
quality to the figuration of the marks that act
upon the 'landscape'. They do have varying degrees
of action imbued in them and due to their verticality
some seem to reference monumentality and the human
figure. But first and foremost, the Abstract Place-meants
are conceptually situated within Baudrillard's
third and fourth phases of the image, which sequences
like this: '1 it is a reflection of basic reality.
2 it masks and perverts a basic reality. 3 it
masks the absence of a basic reality. And 4 it
bears no relation to reality whatever: it is it's
own pure simulacrum.
While
the conceptual discussion within Painting's own
history was the impetus for their creation, they
are, in the end, aesthetic objects that are meant
to be beautiful. And their titles are the only
reminder of the conceptual discussion that led
to their formation. It may be totally unimportant
that they are based on general principles or theories,
and historical narratives - the Abstract
and the -meant will most likely be dropped from
the title in the viewer's mind because they will
be experiencing Place .
The
source for these paintings is my imagination.
I have no sketches or photos when I start mixing
the paint.
Lego
Portraits
When
I was 9 it was 1984 and I was a Lego Man. For
5 years of my childhood my creative and imaginary
energies were spent building and destroying Lego
worlds, with myself as one of the figurines. I
felt the drama that a small man in a space suit
amongst gargantuan inhospitable objects (ordinary
household furniture) felt. The Experience was
like synaesthesia - when he moved I felt the movement.
When he flew in a spaceship skimming the surface
of walls and counters, I knew the danger and control
necessary for such skilled maneuvering. I could
escape my own body, and, like god, create my own
body.
I
am reexamining the role-playing I did as a child
in the context of an adult by putting on the suit
I wore invincibly as a child. I am experiencing
life on its normal boring scale, but now, I cannot
escape my body. Am I a victim of the limited mobility
from the suit I wear, or is this extra protection
what makes me super human?
These images are an homage to the first creative
play that I truly loved. Lego's were my first
source of inspiration. They combined rational
spatial exploration through standardized shapes
with the storyline and fantasy that drove their
assemblage. It is that same need for structure
and fantasy that is behind The Lego Man Series.
|
million
fishes arts collective 
