Dave Kennedy
April 2014 | Gallery4Culture
Amalgam
April 3-24, 2014
Opening: First Thursday, April 3, 2014 from 6:00PM to 8:00PM
In Amalgam, Dave Kennedy persists in his knack for turning objects into veritable subjects with a foray into the still-life genre. He composes photographic images from familiar items that make up everyday life. The series depicts a broad range of foods (bananas, hot dogs, pomegranates, beef patties, butter and chicken breasts) aesthetically modified in shape, size, texture and color. These elegant compositions are surprisingly disarming; Kennedy uses unexpected combinations to scramble our senses and challenge how we typically interpret what we see. His juxtapositions imply variations that might breed beneath the skin of things. Insight suggests this might be similarly true of people – that we too are often more than we appear to be – but we only tend to gather that perspective after formulating a more intimate conversation.
Amalgam also incorporates three video installations in which Dave Kennedy steps in front of his own camera. Projected onto a suspended screen, Purple Dave is an animation whose humor contradicts its meticulous crafting. The artist goes a shade deeper than karaoke, exploring the depth of his topic with a masterful balance of parody and passion. In a second video, The Cat, Myself, and the Bird, Kennedy embodies multiple selves masquerading as others. This work explores the topic of internal and external realms of persona while continuing the meditation on appearances and subjectivities. Likewise, the video Orthodox shows the artist revealing a hidden family secret with the use of a doppelgänger. These works suggest a focus on combinations rather than a singular existence. By blurring the boundaries of space and time, reality and illusion, Dave Kennedy’s video art mirrors back a shared human experience that mixes beauty, reverence, disregard, ugliness and even tension.
About the Artist
Dave Kennedy earned an MFA in Photomedia from the University of Washington. His undergraduate degree, in art & design, is from Western Washington University in Bellingham. He currently teaches, as adjunct faculty, at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. Kennedy’s art synthesizes his interdisciplinary skills in filmmaking, lighting, design, design production and fine arts photography. He has exhibited nationally; commissioned works include private interests as well as commercially-based collaborations with designers, art directors and creative directors for such distinguished clients as Adobe, ATT, Boeing, DDB, Hasbro, IBM, Microsoft and the University of Washington.