Arnold J. Kemp is an American artist who works in painting, print, sculpture, and poetry. Kemp received a BA/BFA from

Tufts University Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...

and the

School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston A school is an educational institution designed to provide learning spaces and learning environments for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is sometimes compulsor ...

, and an MFA from

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. From 1991 to 2005, Kemp lived and worked in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

, CA, where he showed works independently and was a curator at

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) is a multi-disciplinary contemporary arts center in San Francisco, California, United States. Located in Yerba Buena Gardens, YBCA features visual art, performance, and film/video that celebrates local, natio ...

. More recently, he was chair of the MFA in Visual Studies at Pacific Northwest College of Art PNCA in

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...

. He also served as Painting and Printmaking Chair & Associate Professor at the School of the Arts,

Virginia Commonwealth University Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) is a public research university in Richmond, Virginia. VCU was founded in 1838 as the medical department of Hampden–Sydney College, becoming the Medical College of Virginia in 1854. In 1968, the Virgini ...

. Currently he is Dean of Graduate studies at School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Professor of Painting and Drawing.

Work

In 2001, he first showed work in

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

at the

Studio Museum The Studio Museum in Harlem is an American art museum devoted to the work of artists of African descent. The museum's galleries are currently closed in preparation for a building project that will replace the current building, located at 144 W ...

's Freestyle Exhibition. The "Freestyle" exhibition was discussed in the context of the

post-black art Post-black art is a category of contemporary African American art. It is a paradoxical genre of art where race and racism are intertwined in a way that rejects their interaction. I.e., it is art about the black experience that attempts to dispel th ...

movement, a moment where black artists confronted and abandoned the label of being 'black' artists. In 2022 Kemp exhibited new work at both M. LeBlanc Gallery and the Neubauer Collegium in Chicago, IL. For both exhibitions the work continued the themes of masking and the use of aluminum foil. Significant works of Kemp's are in the collections of the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, The

in Harlem, The Berkeley Art Museum, The

Portland Art Museum The Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon, United States, was founded in 1892, making it one of the oldest art museums on the West Coast and seventh oldest in the US. Upon completion of the most recent renovations, the Portland Art Museum becam ...

, The

Tacoma Art Museum The Tacoma Art Museum (TAM) is an art museum in Tacoma, Washington, United States. It focuses primarily on the art and artists from the Pacific Northwest and broader western region of the U.S. Founded in 1935, the museum has strong roots in the c ...

, the Fine Arts Collection at the

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institut ...

, and the

Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, commonly known as The Loeb, is a teaching museum, major art repository, and exhibition space on the campus of Vassar College, in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. It was founded in 1864 as the Vassar Colleg ...

at Vassar College. In 2012, Kemp was awarded a Fellowship from the

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was founded in 1925 by Olga and Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died on April 26, 1922. The organization awards Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been ...

. Kemp has also received awards from the

Joan Mitchell Foundation Joan Mitchell (February 12, 1925 – October 30, 1992) was an American artist who worked primarily in painting and printmaking, and also used pastel and made other works on paper. She was an active participant in the New York School of artis ...

, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation,

Artadia Artadia is an American arts non-profit organization founded in 1999. They are headquartered in New York City, and support visual artists with unrestricted, merit-based financial awards as well as other opportunities. History Artadia was founded i ...

Art Matters Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of wh ...

, and

Printed Matter, Inc Printed Matter, Inc. is an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit grant-supported bookstore, artist organization, and arts space which publishes and distributes artists' books. It is currently located at 231 11th Avenue in the Chelsea neighborhood of N ...

Content of Artwork

Over the last decade, no material has been as powerfully symbolic for Kemp as aluminum foil. This domestic, yet industrial substance—reflective, yet burnished, crinkly, and endlessly impressionable—has become the artist's truest metaphor for the psyche. Many of the objects that Kemp has created with foil have taken the form of "masks"—expanses of fractalized sheet foil with strangely shaped holes that resemble eyes and mouths. Their depths appear to collapse time and space, imbuing the works with an indescribable sense of traumatic duration. In the masks, Kemp also uses foil as a foil, to deflect menace, to fool and outsmart violence and predatory behavior, and to protect what is most critical, vulnerable, and precious: art, queer love, blackness, rage, justice ... At times Kemp reproduces the foils as color photographs. In this form, they fill their frames such that the only edges we see become dark orifices, signaling that we are in the presence of an object with an unspecified relation to a body, or disembodied spirit. Kemp has produced these images in varying sizes; some as tall as dressing mirrors. At this size, the foil's patterns become a field of refraction ruptured by the dark, worrying pools.

Exhibitions

* KSMOCA, Portland, OR 2019 * Fourteen 30 Contemporary, Portland, OR 2018 * May 68/Martos Gallery, New York, NY, 2018 * Biquini Wax, Mexico City, Mexico 2017 * Iceberg Projects, Chicago, IL 2017 * Cherry & Lucic, Portland, OR 2016 * Soloway, Brooklyn, NY 2015 * PDX Contemporary, Portland, OR (2009 & 2010) * Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco (2009) * Envoy, New York (2008) * TBA Festival/ Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, Oregon (2007) * Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco (2006) * Quotidian Gallery, San Francisco (2002) * Debs & Co., New York (2001) * ESP, San Francisco (1998)

References

* https://art.newcity.com/2017/08/31/art-50-2017-chicagos-visual-vanguard/4/

External links

Art 21 article

Interview with Kemp
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kemp, Arnold Year of birth missing (living people) Living people African-American artists Artists from San Francisco Pacific Northwest College of Art faculty Place of birth missing (living people) Stanford University alumni Tufts University alumni 21st-century American artists 21st-century African-American artists

Work

Content of Artwork

Exhibitions

Further reading

References

External links