| You know all those sure to be jaw-dropping, monumental collages that you tried your hand at every month or so throughout high school and college from the pages of years’ worth of hoarded fashion and design magazines? The ones that always ended up appearing specifically trite and completely tasteless despite even your best artistic intentions? Maybe this was just me and every other teenage girl in the late 90s, but there’s something serious to be said for making assemblage art cool again, and worthwhile for once. Artist Marcus Kenney is the culprit putting every one of us to shame on this all too well trodden front. |  |
Collage Matters – Whitney May
You know all those sure to be jaw-dropping, monumental collages that you tried your hand at every month or so throughout high school and college from the pages of years’ worth of hoarded fashion and design magazines? The ones that always ended up appearing specifically trite and completely tasteless despite even your best artistic intentions? Maybe this was just me and every other teenage girl in the late 90s, but there’s something serious to be said for making assemblage art cool again, and worthwhile for once.
Artist Marcus Kenney is the culprit putting every one of us to shame on this all too well trodden front. Thanks to years of hoarding worlds more than old issues of Elle, Art Forum and Seventeen, Kenney has both his creative talent and a massive, noteworthy collection of found printed matter to his credit and artistic advantage. Besides his preference for this unusual and incredibly diverse medium, Kenney’s choice of subject matter is similarly distinctive for its undeniably biting, yet at times elusive social commentary.
There’s apparently a great deal more to these huge and beautiful, completely arresting assemblage artworks than the years of collecting that must have occurred prior to their fruition. The artist’s use of found matter may be one way to comment on the present with the materials of the past, but Kenney also seems to have a whole host of personal experiences and memories to piece together into art as well.
Whitney May: You grew up on a farm outside of a tiny town in Louisiana—not exactly the center of any art world. Can you explain how, why and when art came to be a focal point in your life and especially in your upbringing? It is, after all, not a typical cotton farm aspiration.
Marcus Kenney: Being an artist definitely wasn’t a career option where I grew up. There was farming or working on the off shore oil rigs and I intended to do neither. My earliest memory of any artist was of Van Gogh and something about him cutting his ear off. I became fascinated by that story and even cut my cat’s ear off with a pair scissors. It’s a true story. In a book store I came across The Americans by Robert Frank and that pretty much changed my life.
WM: What effects do you believe your upbringing might have on your current creations? Can its vestiges only be traced within your subject matter, or is there also something in the very techniques, textures and materials that you employ that harkens back to the rural environment of your childhood?
MK: Absolutely. Growing up in a really isolated environment, I was able to explore the limited resources I had to the fullest. I knew every inch of the several hundred acres around my house. I had explored every old house and barn, every riverbank and gully. There wasn’t much else to do. Perhaps that’s why the detail is so important to me. Even the fields themselves I would scour and hunt for Indian arrowheads of which I found several hundred. I also collected old bottles that I would dig out of the side of the riverbank. Collecting has always been a part of my life and I guess with art I was able to put my collections to use. My house burned down when I was 15, along with my collections of artifacts. Some of my arrowheads were hundreds if not thousands of years old. So having lost all of my belongings, I become obsessed with rescuing others, albeit through the dump or the side of the road. And that’s really how all of this started.
WM: What is your typical assemblage process?
MK: I generally start with a blank canvas and go from there. Most of the time it’s intuitive, but often I will start with a vague idea and work it out. Lately I’ll start with the landscape and then begin to play with the narrative.
WM: With each assemblage work, you assume the roles of collage artist, comic, painter, garbage collector and social commentator. Which of these hats is the most challenging for you? Which do you most value donning?
MK: By far “the artist” is the most challenging because there is no definition for what it really means. Our culture calls people that make sandwiches at Subway artists. I believe an “artist” assumes all those roles, including occasionally making a sandwich if need be. I never intended on doing this. You hear those stories of the kids that knew from birth that they were artists, and it just wasn’t that way with me. I somehow stumbled into it and have never been able to wipe it off.
WM: Within your aesthetic, what do you consider to be the meaning and effect of heavy repetition and layering of similar or identical pieces of found matter?
MK: I try to create interesting negative and positive space in my work; however I want the negative space to be just as interesting as the positive. So, in works like The Infidels, I used the repetition of the cigar labels to create the sky. The sky acts as the negative space but it’s not just a monochromatic flat sky, but it still reads as such. Does that make sense? I will often start collections that take years to accumulate enough of one material to make a surface. Not quite as easy as running to the art store and buying a tube of paint, but a lot more rewarding.
WM: Besides the fact that it’s free, what’s the draw behind found printed matter as a vehicle for your brand of contemporary social and political commentary?
MK: People love to make those associations but it really isn’t about that to me. My background is in film and photography, so I began collaging as way to teach myself to paint. I don’t use cigarette papers to sneak some anti-smoking message into my work. I’ll just come out and say it. Please give up smoking!!!! Perhaps it could reference our disposable culture or materialism or whatever. But for me its just tubes of paint. Also, I have the philosophy that if someone else has done the work for me, why do it. For instance, take an illustration of bird out of a children’s book. Why spend the time to render it in paint if I can cut it out and use it as is? It’s like a big collaboration with lots of anonymous illustrators and designers.
WM: What is your personal relationship to the politics and social comments found within your creative productions?
MK: People do find my work political and it does comment on contemporary society but I try to not to make particular statements about my view. I prefer to ask questions and give the viewer the option to bring their own beliefs and ideals to the picture. It’s a bit like journalism, but condensing a week’s worth of news into a four-foot canvas.
WM: What is the role of humor in your art?
MK: It’s funny you ask.
WM: I recently came upon your work The Infidels in the Marcia Wood Gallery booth at Art (212) in New York and was blown away by your overall aesthetic—all of its intricacy, delicateness and otherworldliness. How much effort do you put into making something that is aesthetically pleasing in this way, and what do you consider to be your recent assemblage works’ relationship to beauty in general?
MK: My grandmother was a Louisiana Cajun and spoke very broken English and could not read or write. She truly was from the old world. I remember once walking outside and she was spray painting a shrub in brilliant gold enamel. I ran over and explained that she would kill the plant and she replied “yes, but it will be beautiful.” I remember that. Always.
