EXHIBITION IMAGES | ARTIST PAGE: COLLINS | KENNY
Armory Presents, Booth P11, Pier 94, New York, NY
Armory Presents, Booth P11, Pier 94, New York, NY
Armory Presents, Booth P11, Pier 94, New York, NY
Armory Presents, Booth P11, Pier 94, New York, NY
Armory Presents, Booth P11, Pier 94, New York, NY
Matt Kenny
Secaucus, May 21, 2015, 2017, Oil on canvas
26 x 33 inches (66 x 83.8 cm) MK032
Detail Image: Matt Kenny, Secaucus, May 21, 2015
Matt Kenny
August 14, 2015, 2019
Oil on canvas
34 x 44 inches (86.4 x 111.8 cm) MK033
Detail Image: Matt Kenny, August 14, 2015
Matt Kenny
November 23, 2016, 2019 Oil on canvas
32 x 39 inches (81.3 x 99.1 cm) MK034
Detail Image: Matt Kenny, November 23, 2016
Matt Kenny, August 5th, 2017, 2018
Oil on canvas, 24 x 29 inches (61 x 73.7 cm) MK031
Detail Image: Matt Kenny, August 5th, 2017, 2018
Graham Collins
Lola Says, 2019
Bronze
27 1/2 x 13 x 2 3/4 inches (68.85 x 33 x 59.4 cm) GCollins050
Alternate view: Graham Collins, Lola Says
Graham CollinsWallflower, 2019
Bronze
15 x 8 1/2 x 4 inches (38.1 x 20.625 x 10.2 cm) GCollins051
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Graham Collins
The Dropdown Menu of the Soul II, 2019
Bronze
27 x 52 1/2 x 6 1/2 inches (68.6 x 132.5 x 155.5 cm) GCollins048
Alternate view: Graham Collins, The Dropdown Menu of the Soul II
Graham Collins, Sentinel, 2019
Bronze
14 x 6 1/2 x 3/4 inches (35.6 x 1554.5 x 86.4 cm) GCollins047
Alternate view: Graham Collins, Sentinel, 2019
Graham Collins Interpreter, 2019 Bronze 4 1/2 x 17 3/4 x 5 inches (1046.5 x 4404.4 x 12.7 cm) GCollins049
Graham Collins Interpreter, 2019, Bronze 4 1/2 x 17 3/4 x 5 inches (10.5 x 44.4 x 12.7 cm) GCollins049
Halsey McKay is thrilled to bring a two-person booth with new bronze sculptures by Graham Collins and oil paintings by Matt Kenny to the Armory Show. Each artist plies classical genres of western art with contemporary wit and virtuosic skill. In their work, each elevates the ordinary to the monumental, as they treat the banal with visual acuity, contextual erudition, and physical materials that are historically associated with significance.
Matt Kenny uses painting in the service of a long-term investigation into the shifting landscape surrounding New York City in the post 9/11 era. Kenny’s recent paintings track changes at an enigmatic site in Secaucus, New Jersey behind which lurks One World Trade Center, a singularly explicit expression of a landscape shaped by a catastrophic turning point in history. Kenny takes this building as his subject in a series of photorealist landscapes made for the Armory Show. Kenny’s pursuits are driven by an interest in the collective reading of these post-9/11 shifts in environment and culture, surveying the boundaries between objective and subjective readings in these journalistic paintings. These paintings consider whether it is possible to view this shared skyline unprejudiced.
Graham Collins’ free-form sculptures also examine the instinct to pile high towards achievement that which makes “us”. Rather than a grand notion, like freedom, bronze casts of tortilla chips, moldy bread, and saline solution bottles are stacked atop deodorant canisters, toothbrushes, and electrical cords. These semi-precious bits are soldered together into improbably upright, unique structures. Defying any unifying association, the mystery of their inclusion challenges the priority and prestige usually afforded to bronze objects. Decidedly elegant, in spite of their cobbled-together nature, Collins sculptures celebrate the act of making while goading the genre that they join the lineage of.
Both artists render permanent, that which is in flux or entropic–Kenny’s depictions of an ever-shifting landscape, and Collins’ bronzed foodstuffs, hygiene products, and studio scraps. Viewed together, the two impose alternate meanings upon each other’s work – inviting unique interpretations that can be sublime, or menacing. Collins’ humble stacks can be read as memorials to, or wreckage from, the civilization depicted in Kenny’s sites. Both artists are represented by Halsey McKay Gallery.
Graham Collins (born 1980, Washington, D.C.) Collins received his BFA from Corcoran College of Art in Washington and his MFA from Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Recent solo exhibitions have been with Halsey McKay Gallery, New York, New York; The Journal, Brooklyn, NY; Almine Rech, Brussels, Belgium; Bugata & Cargnel, Paris, France; Jonathan Viner Gallery, London, United Kingdom. His work has been included in several group exhibitions, most recently at Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, California; C. Grimaldis, Baltimore, Maryland; Marlborough Contemporary, New York, New York and He currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
Matt Kenny (born 1979, Kansas City, MO) Kenny earned a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Halsey McKay Gallery, The National Exemplar, Karma and Derek Eller Gallery and 55 Gansevoort in New York. Recent group exhibitions include Interiors, with Aaron Aujla, Cooper Cole Gallery, Toronto, ON; American Sculpture, The National Exemplar, Urbanities, James Fuentes, New York, NY; Ghost Current, V1 Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark; Teste, Galleria Alessandra Bonomo, Rome, Italy among others. His work has been featured and reviewed in The New York Times, Purple Diary, Blouin ArtInfo, The East Hampton Star and Artsy Magazine among others. Kenny lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.