I
attended Kevin Kremler’s graduate thesis show in the Sheppard gallery on the 5th
of April 2012. I was unfortunately
unable to make his lecture. The title of
his show was “Postcards from the Gray Area”.
Kevin
works in a variety of mediums, including drawing, sculpture and video. His artist’s statement reads: “I make works
to provide experiences that allow reassessment to the ever changing world
around us.” His thesis show consisted of
four pieces.
An
electronic installation called “Show Card” consisted of a camera, projector,
flatscreen monitor, and a printer. The
participant sat down in front of a large screen, where step by step
instructions were posted to walk them through the piece’s process. The end result produced a postcard that the
participant could keep that replicated Norman Rockwell’s famous “Triple
Self-Portrait”. The next piece was an
enormous drawing in crayon done on a wood board and suspended from the ceiling called
“Crayola Vangola”, and it featured a portrait of Van Gogh done in Van Gogh’s
distinctive late-impressionist style. There
was a video installation called “The seduction of Art in the Mind of a Willing
Participant” and it featured about a dozen televisions showing video of a brain
scan. The last piece was a kinetic
sculpture called “The Grey Area”, which involved a rotating frame that dropped
sand in various patterns, controlled by participants that shoveled sand into it
and spun it.
I
enjoyed the show immensely, and felt that it was a great insight into the mind
of another artist. It was intentionally
enigmatic, but Kevin’s art speaks for itself.
My favorite piece was probably “Show Card”, because it was like nothing
I had ever seen before.