Press Releases
You Can Have It All, A Group of One
Codework, Braille Walden Series
Waking Up With Van Gogh
Bloom, Morean Exhibition
Today’s Visual Language: Southern Abstraction, A Fresh Look
You Can Have It All, A Group of One
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 2/6/2012 Contact: Kenn Kotara 828-236-2265Contemporary Local Artist Kenn Kotara Featured in “You Can Have It All”
A new exhibition, “You Can Have It All—A Group of One” is featuring selected works of contemporary artist Kenn Kotara (www.kotarastudio.com) at the Weizenblatt Gallery at Mars Hill College. The public is invited to the artist reception Thursday, February 16, from 4-6 p.m. The show will continue through March 9.
Kotara works in a variety of mediums and the exhibition will feature works on canvas, Mylar, suspended screen sculptures and ceramic sculpture. An Asheville resident, Kotara’s work is influenced by the environment of the Deep South, particularly his Louisiana childhood. While Kotara’s works are abstractions, at its root the work is grounded in his observations of nature. As he sees it, “There is nature and then there is human nature, and it’s the in-between, this link, that I seek in all of my work.”
Kotara’s prolific creativity falls into numerous catergories and says, “It makes sense that the creative process not be limited to one set of categories. We need not hold ourselves to be limited by one definition. By our very nature, we are a mixture of inspiration and initiation.”
The color, shape and patterns of Kotara’s work offer a universal appeal and communicate through the abstraction in a language unique to each viewer of his work. For this reason, the artist’s work may be found in diverse venues and has been included in over 100 exhibitions internationally and is in public, private and corporate collections. His work has even appeared in the HBO series “Treme” based in New Orleans.
Ken Gregory, Director of the Weizenblatt Gallery, commented on Kotara’s work that,
“His conceptual installation and large scale pieces will take the re-defining of the gallery to new levels. Our students will greatly benefit from viewing and discussion of his work and I believe that he will expand their concepts of art and design with his mastery.” This is also a show that the public will find evocative and a very different experience.”
The Weizenblatt Gallery is on the Mars Hill College Campus that will offer an innovative new BFA in Visual Communication Design program beginning Fall, 2012. The new program is designed to prepare students for a wide variety of careers in the technology-intensive art media required for today’s visual communications and for further graduate study.
According to Dr. Rick Cary, Dean, Fine Arts and Professional Programs, Weizenblatt Gallery is taking a new direction. “We want to feature innovative perspectives of contemporary artists, preferably those whose work is seen nationally as well as in the WNC area. We hope to encourage our students, the Asheville and WNC arts communities, and others to engage with a wide variety of styles, new materials, and new ways of seeing. Nationally known artist Kenn Kotara's work is primarily nonrepresentational and crosses borders between painting, sculpture, and installation. His work resonates with echoes from modernist art history, but ventures into its own realm.”
####################
Waking Up With Van Gogh
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 1/16/2012 Contact: Kenn Kotara 828-236-2265 www.kotarastudio.comArtist Kotara Responds Creatively to Waking Up With Van Gogh
Invited to take part in the exhibit, “Waking Up With Van Gogh”, local contemporary artist Kenn Kotara (www.kotarastudio.com) accepted the challenge to respond to Vincent Van Gogh’s iconic “Bedroom in Arles, 1889.” Moni Hill, curator of the show, invited fellow artists to respond to Van Gogh’s painting by finding aspects of the painting that spoke to them and to communicate it back via their creative work. The result is this exhibit at the Hickory Museum in Hickory, NC, from April 7–July 29 2012 that allows the public a glimpse into the creative process of working artists as well as the chance to delve into one of Van Gogh’s most revealing and intimate paintings.
Hill points out that Van Gogh moved to Arles, France in 1888 from Paris and hoped other artists would follow so that they might establish a community of artists. “In many ways, Asheville embodies the community of artists that Vincent sought to create. The Western North Carolina area has become home to a vast roster of talented artists.”
Wondering why this particular Van Gogh painting has become so iconic, Hill figured what better way to answer this question than to ask other artists. “The many thoughtful and talented artists who responded provide not only insight and instructive for me, but for the public who view this exhibition, “ she commented.
Kotara’s artistic response to the Van Gogh painting is his “Mistral”, an eight panel wood screen representing van Gogh’s bedroom and his surrounding landscape. “The title “Mistral” comes from the famous southern French wind. “The impetus for ‘Mistral’ is the Japanese screen and the effect that Japanese art had on van Gogh,” explains Kotara. “The eight wood panels attached accordion style represent van Gogh’s bedroom (interior) and his surrounding landscape (exterior). The interior is characterized by a decorative flatness of intense color on a white plane. The bold design of rectangles and squares represent objects within the bedroom - window, bed, framed artwork, etc. While the interior focuses on an orderly and peaceful domesticity, the exterior is evocative of intense color and energy. The exterior exudes the intensity of how van Gogh envisioned his world. It was a world in which he, like any artist, was attempting to come to terms with, by finding order within the chaos.”
Kotara’s work has been included in over 100 exhibitions internationally and is in public and corporate collections. His work has appeared in the HBO series “Treme” based in New Orleans.
For more information about the artist visit: www.kotarastudio.com and for information about this exhibit visit: www.wakingupwithvangogh.com
####################
Bloom, Morean Exhibition
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 1/11/2012 Contact: Kenn Kotara 828-236-2265www.kotarastudio.comContemporary Local Artist Kenn Kotara Featured in “Bloom” Morean Exhibition
Local contemporary artist Kenn Kotara was invited to exhibit selected pieces from his work on Mylar for a a new exhibition, “Bloom” at the Morean Arts Center, St. Petersburg, Florida. The exhibition opens January 27 and runs through March 11, 2012. The show includes painting, sculpture, installation and video work through which artists convey the beauty and complexity of the flower form.
An Asheville resident, Kotara’s work is influenced by the environment of the Deep South, particularly his Louisiana childhood and his education in architecture. While Kotara’s paintings are abstractions, the roots of his work are grounded in his observations of nature combined with his architectural background sense of line and form. In his works on Mylar he works along the lines of organic fractals and natures number system, the Fibonacci series. While flowers were the initial inspiration, Kotara was influenced by his thoughts of human nature, realizing the variety of repetitive shapes seemed to be somewhat like people.
In talking about his Mylar art Kotara reflects, “People naturally strive for connection to community, and simultaneously long for distinction based on our unique qualities. So, the individual component a person, an organic fractal is a cosmos in and of itself. And when these units are composed together and moving in rotation, we, like organic fractals, fashion complex universal systems.”
The artist’s work has been included in over 100 exhibitions internationally and is in public and corporate collections. Most recently his work appears in the second season of the HBO series “Treme” based in New Orleans.
For more information about the artist visit: www.kotarastudio.com
###################
Today’s Visual Language: Southern Abstraction, A Fresh Look
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 3.20.2012 Contact: Kenn Kotara 828-236-2265
www.kotarastudio.comKotara Mylar Abstract Art Exhibits at Mobile Museum of Art
Mobile, AL---The Mobile Museum of Art’s new exhibition, “Today’s Visual Language: Southern Abstraction, A Fresh Look” is showing selected works on Mylar by contemporary artist Kenn Kotara. Opening April 20th the show continues through September 16, 2012
Through his works on Mylar, Kotara explains that he explores how form comes into being through his creative response to inspirational catalysts from the physical and conceptual realms, concurrently. “They are an extension of the grid-based systems similar to all of my work, but this vein of work reframes the environs more along the lines of organic fractals and nature’s number system, the Fibonacci series.”
Paul Richelson, Chief Curator of the Mobile Art Museum said, “Meeting Kenn Kotara at an exhibition in Atlanta and seeing his work, I knew he had to be in our Southern Abstraction exhibition, and he was the first person we invited. The strength and originality of his work made us feel confident that the exhibition would be a great success.”
Kotara works in a variety of mediums and his prolific creativity falls into numerous categories as can be viewed on his website: www.kotarastudio.com
His work is influenced by the environment of the Deep South, particularly his Louisiana childhood. While Kotara’s works are primarily abstractions, at its root the work is grounded in his observations of nature. As he sees it, “There is nature and then there is human nature, and it’s the in-between, this link, that I seek in all of my work.”Kotara’s work offers a universal appeal and communicates through the abstraction in a language unique to each viewer of his work. For this reason, the artist’s work may be found in diverse venues and has been included in over 100 exhibitions internationally and is in public, private and corporate collections. His work even appeared in the HBO series “Treme” based in New Orleans.
According to Richelson the genre of abstract, non-representational art is a living, vibrant form of expression for a surprisingly large number of artists in the Southeastern states, as it is worldwide. TODAY'S VISUAL LANGUAGE: Southern Abstraction, A Fresh Look is an overview of contemporary abstract art. A variety of materials including painting on canvas and paper, drawings on paper, glass, fiber/mixed media and collage materials are included, The invited 37 artists have ties to Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina and Virginia.
********************
1. Making my way, 2011, pencil on mylar, 30 x 22
2. Self-organizing composition, 2011, pencil & color pencil on mylar, 24 x 24
###################
Code Work, Braille Walden Series, Flanders Gallery, Raleigh, NC
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 2.27..2012 Contact: Kenn Kotara 828-236-2265
www.kotarastudio.comContemporary artist Kenn Kotara is exhibiting his Braille Walden Series in the Flanders Gallery Exhibition, “Codework” March 3 through April 6 at Flanders Gallery, 302 South West Street, Raleigh, NC.
Kotara’s art entitled “and if, between the two” is based on Henry David Thoreau’s book, Walden. The Braille works are transcribed from, and correspond to, the eighteen chapters of Walden. Each piece is composed of two rectangular colored blocks of hand-hammered, bas-relief Braille dots, adhered together to form minimalist landscape. Each coupled, colored rectangle reflects Kotara’s visual interpretation of a single chapter.
Reflecting on his work Kotara says, “The goal of the installation is to achieve a mode of increased challenge for advancing a significant theme in my creative discourse – that when we take time to observe closely, we see that visual art is connected to literature, communication, education, the environment and differing cultures.”
The artist points out, “and if, between the two” while it may tend to alienate a viewer due to its minimalist content, is an experiment in form and space that delivers the natural exterior of the Walden Pond landscape to an urban interior. So while viewers are challenged, the project also provides a place of quiet meditation, allowing for moments of respite in a frenetic world.”
The Braille series is one of several of Kotara’s creative expressions. Fascinated with nature – of form, space, and connections between people and their environments – he explores theories of natural and physical science, and the entire cosmos through his numerous works on canvas, paper, Mylar, and Polaroid photography.
Kotara’s work has been included in over 100 exhibitions internationally and is in public and corporate collections. Most recently his work appears in the second season of the HBO series “Treme” based in New Orleans.
For more information about the artist visit: www.kotarastudio.com
**************
