Dave Kinsey
Dave and I began this interview in the summer of 2020, only to be interrupted by a continuous stream of tumultuous events in an already chaotic calendar year. While a new year is in no way a clean slate, it did offer the opportunity to revisit our conversation, this time on the eve of Kinsey’s upcoming solo exhibition Strange Beings. Stay tuned for the larger conversation digging deeper into Kinsey’s history in his upcoming monograph.
Dave Kinsey (b. 1971, Pittsburgh PA), has exhibited nationally and internationally at galleries including LUX Art Institute in Encinitas, CA; Library Street Collective in Detroit; Jules Maeght Gallery in San Francisco; Die Kunstagentin in Cologne, Germany; Alice Gallery in Belgium; Joshua Liner Gallery in New York. His works are in the collections of Takashi Murakami, The Penny and Russell Fortune Collection in Indianapolis, Indiana, Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and The Dean Collection in New York. ”
Installation view: “Strange Being” | For the Conventional | Los Angeles
LS: You've recently opened an exhibition of new work called “Strange Being” this week. A few months ago we discussed the rare appearances of the human in your work since 2014. How did a tumultuous 2020 (on a global scale) influence your return to the human figure?
DK: I felt resorting back to a more obvious human form, would help to epitomize our state of being. Collectively we’ve all had to endure a great deal and these figures are a testament to what one may have been feeling at any given moment.
LS: While recognizably human, many of the forms in Strange Beings are homogenous and stylized. In what ways do you hope we can see our own struggles and successes in these figures.
DK: I tried to convey this within the pose of the figures. If you look at “Petrified Being” for example, the figure is positioned in a fetal-like form as if to insinuate protection. It’s my way of expressing the narrative in a formalist way. There’s also the piece “Assiduous Being”, which lends itself to another kind of language. The male figures' robust architecture conveys a sense of strength or courage. That’s just how I perceive this to be.
Domesticated Being, 2020 | Acrylic on canvas | 48 x 40 inches
LS: The titles of the works are all different forms of "beings," ranging from Ephemeral and Petrified, to Sentient, Desolate and Domesticated. How do these relate to your own life and understanding of the human condition? Have you been reading any philosophy in your return to the human form?
DK: I do make a definitive reference to the term “being” within philosophy and how that congeals within the current state of human existence. However, I wanted “being” to be a double entendre —state of being and human being. When I came up with the show title “Strange Being”, I went thru various word interactions that could be used to replace “Strange”, since I wasn’t a hundred percent sure that was the right fit. Once I started adding variations to “Being”, I decided that each piece could have its own visual innuendo that reflects a certain state of being. That’s pretty much how this all came to fruition.
Photography © 2021 Amy Frederick
LS: Let’s go back a bit into your backstory. You studied at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh followed by the Art Institute of Atlanta before moving San Diego and later to Los Angeles. Did you feel negatively impacted being in cities not recognized as "art capitals?” What precipitated the move West?
DK: Traditional or contemporary art wasn’t really on my radar back then, aside from some of the museums in Pittsburgh I would visit while I was in art school. I also feel art wasn’t something I was exposed to in the right way at that time. What I disliked most is what Pittsburgh was lacking within the skate and alternative music culture, which I lived for back then. Our only exposure to these newly emerging urban subcultures was thru videos and magazines. Luckily Pittsburgh was ripe with a small but ardent audience that also gravitated towards these alternative movements.
After my first year of art school in Pittsburgh, I transferred to Atlanta, which was a more modern city than Pittsburgh. Atlanta was rife with a diverse culture too and it felt like a mini NY. It’s also where I started doing graffiti and met many like-minded artists who were into street culture as well. Most of us were transplants so we all began to create our own scene to feed off of.
In the end though, I knew I wanted to get back to California. I lived in Los Angeles for a couple years when I was younger and I fell in love with that environment. A year after I graduated in ’94, I got a design job offer in San Diego and headed West. After seven years in SD, I moved to Los Angeles in 2001 to relocate BLK/MRKT—my design studio and gallery that I co-founded in ‘97—to a larger city with better exposure and opportunities.
Sentient Being, 2020 | Acrylic on canvas | 40 x 34 inches
LS: What was California like in the 90s for a young artist?
DK: I didn’t spend a whole lot of time in Los Angeles during the ‘90s, but the art landscape there seemed pretty barren. Marcea who started New Image Art Gallery in ‘94 was about the only new gallery pushing younger artists—at least from my genre. She was the first to show my work in LA. Besides Marcea, there wasn’t much else happening on that level so we used the streets to get our work out there for the most part.
I did however spend a great deal of time in San Francisco—’97-’00. I would fly up there every couple of weeks and spend the entire weekend just putting stuff up on the streets. At one point, people thought I was from there because I had put up so much work on the streets. Back then, SF was booming with a new generation of emerging artists who came from graffiti & skate culture like myself. Artists from the Mission School like Barry McGee, Chris Johanson, Margaret Kilgallen. These artists as well and many others were making waves and helped shape a new urban art movement.
LS: How would you describe your style at the time, and what were your major influences?
DK: I don’t know if I could rightfully define my work, but back then I was inspired by abstract expressionist painters like Franz Kline, William DeKooning, Lee Kranser, Robert Motherwell. To me, the action painters had that same energy I saw within graffiti pieces and tags—gestural, flowing, spontaneous.
From a more structural and architectural stand point, I admired Alexander Calder’s sculptures. I saw a major retrospective of his work in Paris in ’96 at the Paris Museum of Modern Art, which blew me away. I think that’s the first comprehensive survey I’d ever saw from any modern artist. I also remember seeing his outdoor sculptures too in Philadelphia when I was a kid, so that show brought me back to that place.
LS: At what point did you start to see success in your personal career as an artist? Was there a turning point?
DK: To be honest, pretty much from the beginning things seemed to stick. I launched my first website in ’98, which was a game changer. I immediately started getting emails from people in London, Paris, NY or SF wanting to buy my pieces, offering to show my work, as well requesting interviews in magazines all over the world. It was pretty surreal to become connected globally within an instant and the timing for me was perfect. The idea of sharing and interacting online with people on the other side of the world seemed so incredible to me. From that point on things began to take shape.
Consumer Comfort for Your Pain & Suffering, 2007 | Acrylic & enamel on canvas | 48 x 24 inches
Installation view: 2007 exhibition “Sure, Why Not” | BLK/MRKT Gallery | Los Angeles
LS: Works such as Consumer Comfort for your Pain and Suffering, 2007, and camouflage, 2007 are overtly political, manipulating the image of the American flag from a symbol of national pride to illusions of violence and warfare. When did politics begin to seep into your work? As an artist with strong political beliefs, how did they continue to influence your work while the imagery is less overt?
DK: When I was in my twenties I watched a film called “Baraka” which exposed me to the world thru a tempestuous kaleidoscope of all things human. I also was hooked on the early issues of Colors Magazine, when Tibor Kalman was the Creative Director. That explicit exposure had a huge influence on my consciousness which in turn found its way back into my work. I felt an urgency then to interpret the lopsided world we lived in. War, religion, social/political issues, climate change, all became underlying narratives within my paintings.
When I moved to the mountains in 2010 I started to subdue the visual noise, which in turn was a result of me slowing myself down and tuning out a bit. My work became more focused on addressing the issues within the deterioration of our natural environments— something I took notice of while living in such close proximity to huge swaths of pristine, mostly untouched land. I soon became a product of that environment and wanted to talk more about these issues in my work.
LS: In 2009, you closed the gallery? Did it meet a natural end?
DK: Ha, it met the most natural end possible. About eight months before I shuttered the gallery, I had bought a home four hours north of LA in the Sierra Nevada Mountains on land adjacent to the Sequoia National Park. Literally, a month before my lease was up on the building in LA, a huge pipe underneath the house broke and started pumping thousands of gallons of water from storage tanks up above, deep into the steep hillside the structure was sitting on. For days on end the water pumped into the soil below eventually creating a massive landslide. A large chunk of the foundation and fifteen feet of dirt below the house was washed away in an instant leaving the structure with a huge stress crack in it. The only thing holding up that half of the house was the massive root ball of a sixty foot pine tree.
Long story short, this catastrophe ended up being a strange omen which forced me to change direction in life. In 2010 I moved there full-time to oversee the rebuilding, which took three years to complete.
In the end I felt like I dodged a bullet because the economy had tanked and I had no idea how the gallery would’ve survived with all the overhead. I was also finally released to paint full time, which for me was a gift. During the 15 years of having BLK/MRKT, I was always at loss for studio time so it was refreshing to finally focus on my work without all of the distractions of my past endeavors.
Momentary Bliss, 2015 | Acrylic & collage on canvas | 40 x 34 inches
LS: From 2012-2014, your work dramatically changed. Over the period of a few years, we see a serious reduction of form, the disappearance of the human physiognomy and loose, energetic marks, as well as a general restriction in palette. What precipitated these changes?
DK: In a nutshell, that was just a result of me simplifying my focus and life, while being submerged within a natural environment. That also affected the aesthetics of my work— a simplification of the chaos. I had been wanting to shift direction so living up there helped in the reshaping of my process.
LS: It was about this time that you moved from LA to the outside of Sequoia National Park. I've romanticized this journey - the artist steps back from society to concentrate on his oeuvre. What led you to the woods, and what did your time like there look like?
DK: Yeah, it’s for sure one of those bucket list things you always dream of doing. Aside from being a contractor for 3 years, heh, I mostly spent that time working a lot in the studio, reading, exploring and enjoying the outdoors. It was important for me to create a healthy balance between my personal life and work, which I didn’t have previously. I ended up there for five years, then relocated back to LA, and eventually San Diego where I live currently.
Evolutionary Indifference, 2017 | Acrylic & collage on canvas | 43 x 36 inches
LS: This period outside of Sequoia seems to be one of relative calm, focused on your studio work and connecting with nature in a way you hadn’t had space for before. The resulting work has marked visual changes as well as conceptual structure. How did the move and shift in lifestyle influence a body of work that explored the “tumultuous relationship between humans and the natural world”?
DK: Well, the shift was more visual than anything—my work continues to explore similar topics relating to global unrest, climate change, humans vs. nature, etc. The subdued tonality and change in ambiance became a new way to present similar metaphors, unlike my past work which was visually chaotic.
Living so close to the Sequoia National Park gave me a clearer understanding of how slow change has come about on the earth over millions of years. But, when you see
thousands of pines dying within their native habitat, that undoubtedly gives you a sense that things are falling apart. Much of what’s happening to our natural environments is a result of humanity's inability to care for our planet. These are the issues that seep into my work.
LS: You also spent a lot of this time researching art history and diving deeply into the oeuvre of some of your favorite painters, correct?
DK: Yeah, having so much extra time to read, learn and research was an extraordinary asset I didn’t have previously. I needed it as well to facilitate a renewed understanding of my own work, and to fill in some of the blanks for things I feel I was naive to in the past. It started to become an autodidactic addiction that I still find myself engaged with.
LS: You participated in a few group shows during your time near Sequoia but didn’t truly debut your newest work until a solo exhibition at Library Street Collective in 2014. What was the response like?
DK: For the most part, the response was amazing and the show went well considering my shift in direction. I knew the risk in changing my work so drastically, but that precariousness has only helped bring me to the place I’m at now.
LS: Since 2014, you’ve only painted a handful of paintings with even remote references to the human form. There’s no temptation to go back to any of your old ways?
DK: No, not really. I always want to keep my work new and exciting since I'd probably lose interest if what I was creating ever became a parody of itself. Redundancy is a byproduct of complacency, and I want nothing to do with that.
Jedidiah, 2020 | Old Growth Redwood w/ Steel Base | 108 x 38 x 29 inches
LS: The forms that make up the majority of your paintings from the last five years appear totemic, incorporating various stone and wood elements. As you veer towards sculpture, this form remains consistent. What does this recurring form represent for you?
DK: These forms, whether painted or sculpted, are symbolic of human existence. The sculptures as well are very humanistic in structure, even though the shapes are represented in a more subtractive form than what’s seen in the paintings.
LS: In the past couple of years, we’ve seen the manifestation of this form move beyond the canvas into sculpture in wood and bronze, then reduced and flattened back on canvas in your latest work. As the postmodernists like to joke, is painting dead?
DK: Yeah, maybe it did metaphorically die for me—or it’s simply a momentary delay in my relation to the medium? In 2019 I became somewhat stunted in my interest in using
paint. I just felt this cyclical prediction occurring within my process thru the mediums I chose to use. I decided I needed to disrupt all of this, which is how the Mortal Soil series came to fruition. I don’t foresee a departure from painting entirely, but rather a refreshing of my relationship with those techniques.
As for the sculptures, this has been something I’ve been thinking about exploring since 2012. At the time, I created a bunch of small models using cardboard that I ended up shelving. I wasn’t at that place yet. That later played out in the work I created for my Library Street Collective show. Many of those pieces presented figures as statuesque like beings on pedestals, set within uncanny natural environments. That was when the manifestation into thinking about my work in the physicality of a three-dimensional space began to take shape.
Terrestre 1, 2020 | Marble dust, polymer, acrylic, cardboard, oil stain & wood over linen | 48 x 42 inches
LS: How does the articulation of a similar form across varying medium change its manifestation and perception to you?
DK: I don’t think it changes much at all aside from the aesthetics. The medium simply becomes another vehicle for presenting similar narratives.
LS: One of your latest series (Mortal Soil) introduces a number of new elements onto the canvas while minimizing the energy-based action painting so prevalent in your work. What led you to this change? Are these works more about destruction and calamity? They seem foreboding while still retaining a sense of hope in their austerity.
DK: When I went from painting to working with sculpture, then back to painting, I wanted to somehow give the illusion of dimension within a flattened form. I also wanted to close the relationship between my sculptures and paintings, at least for this series. At the time,
I was spending hours on Google Earth looking at landforms. I became fascinated by geography and how wind, water, and human interference has sculpted the earths skin. This made me further think about my sculptures in a 2D space, and how I could translate that same understanding of degradation into my work.
Lee Bontecou | Untitled, 1961 | Welded steel, canvas, wire, & soot | Copyright Lee Bontecou
LS: Much of your work was political in the past, and now your work has a political and environmental message. What are your beliefs about art as a vehicle for change?
DK: My work is still environmental, but yes, less political for sure. When it comes to art being a vehicle of change? I feel it all depends on how obvious you want the message to be. For example, if you look at racial issues in the work of Mark Bradford vs. Kerry James Marshall, you’d probably have to dig a bit into the backstory behind Bradford’s pieces to see how he contextually aligns with Marshall. For me though, I feel that intensity when I stand in the presence of one of Bradford’s multilayered works. That disguised reveal speaks loudly to me. Also, seeing Lee Bontecou’s retrospective at The Hammer Museum in 2003 had a similar effect on me. I feel art can undoubtedly have an effect on one's psyche and help us to better our understanding of the world around us.
LS: How can a collector or enthusiast get in touch if they'd like to see Strange Beings or inquire about available work?
Email us at: dkinseystudio@gmail.com
LS: What's coming up the rest of the year? I'm excited to see how these few recent bodies of work develop and potentially overlap across various medium.
DK: I have another outdoor sculpture project coming up in a few months. There’s also a capsule collection I’ve created that drops this Spring with a cool brand from New Zealand called I Love Ugly. I’ll be working on some new prints that’ll be dropping as well throughout the year. Everything else is still under wraps at this point but I’m planning on expanding upon this series going forward.
Follow Dave on Instagram @dave_kinsey and visit dkinsey.com for more information. Strange Beings is on view online and in person through February 26, 2021.
Assiduous Being, 2020 | Acrylic on linen | 48 x 42 inches