Vignette: Kayla Bischoff

"The universal language of humanity spanning across time and geography informs my work." - Kayla Bischoff

"Brouhaha" by Kayla Bischoff, Acrylic on birch panel, 35x54in, 2018, $675

When Kayla Bischoff cites her influences, Jean Dubuffet seems to be the clearest line: the utter denial of perspective and the embrace of his ‘art brut’ aesthetic, which celebrated the idea of art produced by ‘non-professionals.’ Bischoff certainly is no amateur, but her dense, kinetic compositions are filled with figures and faces rendered in a deliberately unsophisticated style, as if anybody could draw them.

Yet a laymen’s vision of what is accomplished art would arguably still be colored by an ambition to create form and space with detail and depth built from craft. What Bischoff gives us instead are simple images layered one upon another, forcing relationships and building depth through a density of marks that threatens to overwhelm the viewer; except she knows when to pull up. Her world is all surface, but what a busy, busy surface it is.

“The style in which I paint is a balance of abstraction, representation, spontaneous expression, and conscious decisions. The characters are hurriedly drawn in frenzy, and then built upon with several layers of paint to enhance the depth of the surface. I convey my ideas in paintings because the immediacy allows for uninhibited mark making. The tactile nature of the paint feels authentic while connecting me to the earliest form of human visual expression.” 

“As a contemporary artist I actively study and absorb art history. I seek to create a connection between contemporary art and that of past civilizations. I reference ancient artworks, such as figurines and masks from various cultures — Andean, Mesoamerican, Japanese, African, Aboriginal, etc. The universal language of humanity spanning across time and geography informs my work. The use of stylized figures acts as a communicative shorthand of body language and facial `expressions. Through the playfully chaotic layers of figurative abstraction, my work comments on the plight of the individual and humanity as a whole.”

“Gaping mouths, shrugging shoulders, flailing arms, and cackling faces occupy the surface in an overcrowded frenzy. On the surface my paintings are vibrant and playful; however, I invite the viewer to peer closer into the cluttered surface of detailed disorder to discover many of the abstracted figures experience some inner trepidation.”

In 2017, Bischoff had her 2nd solo exhibit, Push/Pull: Paintings by Kayla Bischoff, at Jasper Community Arts: Krempp Gallery, Jasper Arts Center, Jasper IN.

Bischoff is having a two-person show with Bob Lockhart at PYRO Gallery in Louisville, February 22 through April 7, 2018. There will be an opening reception Friday, February 23 from 5:00-7:00pm, and a Gallery Talk featuring both artists Sunday, February 25 at 1:00pm.

Hometown: Louisville, Kentucky
Education: BA, (Magna Cum Laude) Studio Art: Painting Emphasis/Minors in Art History & Psychology, Bellarmine University, Louisville, KY, 2014
Website: kaylabischoff.com
Instagram: /knbischoff/
Gallery Representation: Galerie Hertz (Louisville)         

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"Egress" by Kayla Bischoff, Acrylic on birch panel, 12 x 12in, 2017, $225

"Hoopla" by Kayla Bischoff, Acrylic on canvas, 24x30in, 2018, $525

"False Faces" by Kayla Bischoff, Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 60in, 2017, $875

"The Blame Game" by Kayla Bischoff, Acrylic on canvas, 36x48in, 2017, $675

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Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2017 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved.

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Legacy: Bob Thompson (1937-1966)

“Thompson was in a class nearly by himself in recognition in the world of art. Not until the emergence of Jean-Michel Basquait in the 1980s would another African-American be so embraced.” – from the African American Registry (AAReg).

On March 1, Louisville Visual Art will award Vinhay Keo the 1st Annual Rising Star Award. The award is meant to recognize a young artist who seems poised to have a more widespread impact in the world of visual art. It honors the memory of Louisville-born artist Bob Thompson, and cites his career as an example of exactly what it might mean to be labeled, “rising star.”

Thompson was born in Louisville but came of age in Boston, where he had been sent to live with relatives after his father was killed in an automobile accident. He entered college as a pre-med student, but increasing depression over the loss of his father left him troubled and unsatisfied. Seeking to alleviate his grief, he returned home to enroll as an art student (with a scholarship) at the University of Louisville in 1956.

According to his entry in Smithsonian American Art Museum, his natural talent and enthusiasm prompted legendary U of L Professor Mary Spencer Nay to encourage him to spend a summer in Provincetown, Massachusetts:

“There were two important art schools in the old fishing village of Provincetown—the Seong Moy Art School and an older, more established institution under the direction of Hans Hofmann, the innovative abstract expressionist painter. One of Hofmann's students at that time was the young artist Jan Müller, who departed from Hofmann's aesthetic principles of nonobjective painting in favor of a figurative style.

Provincetown was an exciting environment for Thompson, and he was especially attracted to Müller's figural paintings and the works of Red Grooms, from Nashville, Tennessee. Grooms was also involved in performances that were later called "Happenings" and represented a new aesthetic concept. Thompson was an active participant in many of Grooms' productions.”

Conventional wisdom for the Louisville artistic community has often held that you have to go elsewhere to “make it”, but Thompson’s story is more fluid than that canard. Coming home was clearly a crucial step in his life - its how he found his true path, yet it also was, in a very short time, the springboard for him to emerge again into the larger world of American Art.

He married Carol Plenda in 1960, and a Walter Gutman Foundation Grant and a John Hay Whitney Fellowship enabled them to spend the first two and-a-half years of their marriage in Europe. Upon their return, Thompson joined the Martha Jackson Gallery, where all of his exhibits made a sensation, and he sold consistently well: his work was purchased for the permanent collections of prominent museums like the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the National Gallery of Art.

Thompson’s paintings range from a large-scale, gestural abstract to a more figurative expressionism. He drew obvious inspiration from the old masters he had studied firsthand in Europe, forming compositions of biblical narratives and classical mythology rendered with an expressionist’s sense of form and color.

"Stairway to the Stars" by Bob Thompson c.1962, oil and photostat on Masonite, 40x60in, © Estate of Bob Thompson

As part of the Hite Art Institute’s 75th Anniversary Celebration, the University of Louisville mounted an exhibit in 2012, Seeking Bob Thompson: Dialogue/Object, which was curated by Hite Art Institute Gallery Director John Begley (now retired), and Slade Stumbo, who at the time was finishing his Curatorial MFA at Hite.

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC is the exclusive representative of the estate of Bob Thompson. Since 1996, they have presented four solo exhibitions of the artist’s work, and published catalogues for three of the shows. Most recently, the gallery presented Naked at the Edge: Bob Thompson in 2015.

Permanent Collections: (select) Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, IL); Brooklyn Museum (Brooklyn, NY); Chrysler Museum of Art (Norfolk, VA); Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville, AR); Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, MI); Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC); The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY); Minneapolis Institute of Art (Minneapolis, MN); Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago, IL); Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, MA); Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY); Nasher Museum of Art,  Duke University (Durham, NC); National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC); New Orleans Museum of Art (New Orleans, LA); Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, PA); Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, DC); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, NY); Speed Art Museum (Louisville, KY); The Studio Museum in Harlem (New York, NY); Tougaloo Art Collections, Tougaloo College (Tougaloo, MS); Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (Hartford, CT); and Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY).

“Le Roi Jones and his Family” (1964) by Bob Thompson, oil on canvas, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC (© Estate of Bob Thompson; courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY

"Untitled (Michelangelo's Fall of Phaeton)" by Bob Thompson, 1963, gouache on paper (page from art catalogue), 12 1/8x8 3/4in, signed and dated, © Estate of Bob Thompson

"The Judgement" by Bob Thompson, 1963. Oil on canvas, 60x84in. Brooklyn Museum, A. Augustus Healy Fund, 81.214. © Estate of Bob Thompson (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 81.214_SL1.jpg)

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Written by Keith Waits.
In addition to his work at the LVA, Keith is also the Managing Editor of a website, www.Arts-Louisville.com, which covers local visual arts, theatre, and music in Louisville.

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Vignette: Ku Hone

“An air of alienation, desolation, despair, aloneness is often pungent in my photos.” – Ku Hone

"City under Abstraction" by Ku Hone, Photograph, 11x14in, 2016 $200

Ku Hone is a photographer whose images encapsulate a fluid sense of place. His images seem to be taken at a very specific location, yet do not necessarily hold the information to identify exactly where we are. They are at once one, specific place and many other places. “Brooding Alley” includes what we assume is a street number, a salient detail by which to gain one’s bearings, but “Lines of Decay” and “Forms in White” speak on mostly abstract terms, the former image evidently modern architecture but the latter proves more elusive, much harder to pin down place or time except as an instance in the mind of the photographer.

Born in South Korea in 1974, Hone has been living in Louisville since 2010. His interest in photography started in early teenage years, but, while holding multiple academic degrees, he has received no formal training in art or photography.

"Lines in Decay" by Ku Hone, Photograph, 16x20in, 2017 $200

“My work attempts to gain new perspectives on the ordinary. I believe that only in a state of confusion can one’s mind spring out towards a new direction. Objects, patterns and such are no longer amusing once one makes the association between the subject and a preconceived idea of the subject already in one’s mind. I often strive to de-construct space in order to gain new (and often confusing) views of ordinary objects. The ultimate goal of such attempts is to kindle the viewers’ imagination and help them appreciate the beauty of the mundane.

“I also thrive in empty space or void. I believe negative space is not simply used to counter-balance positive space but to facilitate a new creative space where the viewer is able to project oneself into the scene. In that sense, it is an invitation to explore and to contemplate. For this reason, simple and minimalistic compositions of lines, curves, geometrical shapes, symmetrical and asymmetrical patterns and textures are abundant in my work. I believe that our innate perception of beauty in nature and objects is based on recognition of basic forms and shapes found within them. And this is how arrangements of simple (and seemingly meaningless) forms can give rise to beauty, meaning, and ultimately, emotions.”

“My work harnesses the absurdity of life. It is what alienates oneself from the world and the life itself. However, one must live on in the face of absurdity, forever searching for the elusive Emperor’s clothes. I believe streets of urban life reflect this struggle. Abandoned objects and disintegrating walls clash with and clutter our life. Exotic and vivid colors clash with one another, juxtaposed with neutral tones. The old clashes with the new. I believe my job is to find beauty and balance in such scenes in an attempt to find hope in the absurdity.“

"Fantasia Nebbiosa" by Ku Hone, Photograph, 16x20in, 2017 $200

Hone is participating in Abstract in Kentucky, a Juried Exhibition running through February 24, 2018 at Kaviar Forge and Gallery in Louisville. He will also be a part of the Mellwood Art Center Spring Art Fair, February 24 & 25, and, later in 2018, the Open to Interpretation exhibit at the Community Arts Center in Danville, KY.

Hometown: Seoul, Korea
Education: BS, Environmental Toxicology, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA; MS & PhD, Toxicology, University of Rochester, New York
Website: https://500px.com/kuhone
Instagram: /ku_hone/

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"Brooding Alley" by Ku Hone, Photograph, 11x14in, 2017 $200

"Forms of White (in Dark)" by Ku Hone, Photograph, 11x14in, 2016 $200

"Mama I Feel The Void" by Ku Hone, Photograph, 11x14in, 2017 $200

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Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2017 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved.

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Student Showcase: Kathryn Combs

"Pope Lick Monster" by Kathryn Combs, Lithograph with screen print, 18x25in, 2017, $425

Although Kathryn Combs’ image is a simple, albeit dynamic, point-of-view of a train trestle, the incomplete fields of text that fill in the open areas of sky hint at something else; an urban folk legend placed in southeastern Jefferson County that positions the highly-placed train crossing as the home of a hybrid creature known as “The Pope Lick Monster.” The legend includes that the “sheepman” lured young people out onto the trestle, and the facts are that more than one tragic death is tied to the location, which the artist follows through on with grisly, yet enigmatic, suggestion.

"A Story About 1960" by Kathryn Combs, Lithograph, 18x10in, 2017, $200

“My work explores the relationship of individual history and common experience. In my art, I combine technology with traditional print media in the form of digitally rendered images put to a plate with any combination of lithography, screen printing, etching, drawing, collage and hand coloring. For each print I conduct intensive research, tapping into public records such as geographical maps, photo archives, and biographical databases. I am also inspired by firsthand accounts, local legends, and oral history. Using these resources, I compose images that contrast familiar scenes with unusual and uncanny features. I like using elements within my prints that play on the viewer’s visual literacy. Glassware and keys become shorthand for domestic life, historical photos of small towns are synonymous with Americana, and famous artworks are tantamount to our entire experience as viewers of art. I interrupt this visual code with color, drawing, and layering of visually represented data (e.g. maps or charts). These interruptions tip off the viewer that there may be more to the image than expected, and convinces them to take a second look.”

Combs uses archival photography to connote specific places and/or times from the past, attempting to connect history to present experience in a combination of collective memory and contemporary printmaking technique.

Combs’ work will be included in the Senior Thesis Exhibition scheduled to open March 1st at the IU Southeast Barr Gallery in New Albany, Indiana, as well as the Annual Juried Student Art Exhibition, Juried Exhibition, Indiana University Southeast, which runs through February 18, 2018, and was curated by Amethyst Beaver (21c). 

Hometown: Crothersville, Indiana
Education: BFA candidate in Printmaking at Indiana University Southeast - Graduating in May
Website: www.kathryn-combs.com
Instagram:@kathryn.combs.art

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"Aaron" by Kathryn Combs, From "Looking Longer" series, Screen print, 15x20in 2017

"Christi" by Kathryn Combs, From "Looking Longer" series, Screen print, 15x20in 2017

"Michelle" by Kathryn Combs, From "Looking Longer" series, Screen print, 15x20in 2017

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Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2017 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved.

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Petersen Thomas Explores Mark Rothko

“I used to think Rothko’s work was about the emotive power of color and tone. I’m starting to think it’s about the paint.”– Petersen Thomas

Mark Rothko's Seagrams paintings at London's Tate Gallery.

The Bunbury-ShPIeL Identity Theatre is proud to present RED by John Logan. RED is the story of Mark Rothko, a Russian Jewish immigrant, who took the American modern art scene by storm in the 1950s. The play focuses on a period in which Rothko worked on the famous Seagram’s murals, commissioned by architect Philip Johnson for his prestigious new Seagram Building. When finished, he refused to deliver them, and the exact reasons are still a point of discussion. Some scholars believe that Rothko created the paintings with the understanding that they would be placed in the main lobby, and that once he was informed that the paintings would instead be installed in the adjoining Four Seasons Restaurant, he was offended. Others are of the opinion that he always knew of the location and had his own, enigmatic reasons for not delivering the pieces; reasons about which we can only now speculate. Nine of the paintings are now in residence at the Tate Gallery in London, delivered there on the morning of Rothko’s suicide in 1970.

Photo by Sarah Katherine Davis Photography

Painter Petersen Thomas became involved in the production through Louisville Visual Art, providing technical assistance - the two actors, portraying Rothko and his assistant, must finish constructing and then begin painting an 8’ x 8” canvas onstage, and some degree of expertise on Mark Rothko. “I am by no means any kind of ‘expert on Rothko, but he has always fascinated me.”

The collaboration began with time in Thomas’ downtown studio, where he “schooled” actors J. Barrett Cooper and Brandon Meeks about the methods and studio practice they are required to emulate onstage.

Director Steve Woodring and Scenic Designer Tom Tutino also prevailed upon Thomas to execute mock Rothko paintings for the set, Rothko’s New York City studio in 1958 (the rights to produce the play allow for facsimile representations but not reproductions of Rothko’s work). Thomas actually painted these in the backstage area at the Henry Clay Theatre.

"Clementine" by Petersen Thomas, Acrylic on canvas, 48x60in, $2000

Thomas paints in different styles, but his heart is perhaps most in abstract expressionism, so his affinity for Rothko comes naturally. Red has been a dominant color in some of his work, such as “Clementine,” pictured here, which is typical of the larger-scale, color field work, although there are also cooler hues in his diminutive, “Lenith Series.”  

It is this work that gave Thomas the foundation to jump into the deep end with his exploration of Rothko. “Rothko is a perfect touchstone for so many tropes in modern art,” explains Thomas. “For instance, someone might look at his work and say, ‘I could do that.’ - Wanna bet? There is so much happening on the canvas, but it looks and feels so simple. That is incredibly hard to do. He was a virtuoso.”

"Lenith VII1" by Petersen Thomas, Acrylic on canvas, 8x8in, $75

“For me, Rothko embodies self-doubt.  When he landed the Seagram commission, he was as revered as a living artist could be. But in response, he makes this wild gesture about the integrity of art. It was the ultimate “fuck you” to the art world. But why? Did he truly believe that the paintings were sacred? Or was that a pose? Trying to figure out the difference between genius and fraud, self and persona, is the fastest way I know to bring you face to face with the abyss.”

So what did Thomas learn about Rothko that he didn’t already know? What insight did the experience of RED provide about one of the most famous artists of the 20th century? “I used to think Rothko’s work was about the emotive power of color and tone. I’m starting to think it’s
about the paint.”

Performance schedule for the Bunbury-ShPIeL Identity Theatre production of RED at the Henry Clay Theatre, 3rd & Chestnut:

Backstage studio for RED.

February 16, 17, 22*, 23, 24,
March 1*, 2, & 3 at 7:30pm
February 18*, 25**, & March 4 at 2:00pm        

*Denotes post-show talkback, **Panel discussion

Thomas was the artist in Residence at Roma Kungsgarn, Gotland Sweden and received the Governor’s Award for Excellence at the Governor’s Art Show in Columbus, Ohio. Exhibitions include: New Art on Newbury, Boston, MA, MiSh Gallery, Columbus, OH, Lemongrass Gallery, Columbus, OH, NorDys Gallery, Birmingham, AL, Karen Lynne Gallery, Boca Raton, FL, “The Nude 2002,” Loudoun House Gallery, Lexington, KY, Drawing from Perception IV, Wright State University Art Galleries, Dayton, OH, and Fidelity Investment Building, Boston, MA.

Hometown: Louisville, Kentucky
Education: BA, Denison University, Ohio; JD, University of Michigan. 

 

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"Lenith 1" by Petersen Thomas, Acrylic on canvas, 8x8in, $75

"Lenith V" by Petersen Thomas, Acrylic on canvas, 8x8in, $75

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Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2017 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved.

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