John Connelly Presents is pleased to announce Kent Henricksen’s third solo exhibition at the gallery. This exhibition will include a series of new porcelain sculptures along with several wall works, placed into a tempestuous environment as Henricksen transforms the space with hand painted and stenciled rain drops.
Awry and gnarled, Henricksen’s porcelain tree trunks are riddled with arborglyphs, delivering messages that speak of human behavior, while conveying both distress and conviction. Appropriated phrases include the exhibition’s title “We are ugly but we are here,” (a coded response adopted by oppressed Haitians to signal hope amidst desperate circumstances) and “People never notice anything” (a Holden Caulfield quote from J.D. Salinger’s, The Catcher in the Rye).
Additional objects in the exhibition include a pair of french doors as well as a window; each set against printed textiles that depict figures free-falling against floating ominous clouds. These figures, silkscreened onto fabric, are derived from archival historical sources as per the artist’s continuing practice. The ungrounded figures, work in tandem with the uprooted porcelain trees and endless rain to reinforce a symbolic sense of “falling” of all the various biblical, political, cultural, economic and personal scenarios imaginable.
Kent Henricksen has had solo exhibitions with Hiromi Yoshii, Tokyo; Arario Gallery, Seoul; Galleria Glance, Torino; c/o – Atle Gerhardsen, Berlin; and Mario Diacano, Boston. His works have been exhibited in The Gold Standard (2006) and Greater New York (2005) at PS 1 Museum of Contemporary Art; ARS 06, Museum of Contemporary Art KIASMA, Helsinki, Finland Crafty, curated by Lisa Tung, Sandra and David Bakalar Gallery, Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, and Pricked: Extreme Embroidery, at the Museum of Art and Design, New York. Henricksen recently exhibited a solo project Wayward We Hunt at the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach. His work is the permanent collections of the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C. and the Harvard University Fogg Museum, Boston.
In conjunction with the exhibition at John Connelly Presents, Henricksen will have a solo exhibition at Paul Kasmin Gallery, A Venomous Bloom, May 6 – June 5, 2009.
For more information please contact us at info@johnconnellypresents.com
