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

Tufts University Tufts University is a private research university in Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts, United States, with additional facilities in Boston and Grafton, as well as Talloires, France. Tufts also has several Doctor of Physical Therapy p ...

and the

School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston A school is the educational institution (and, in the case of in-person learning, the building) designed to provide learning environments for the teaching of students, usually under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of fo ...

, and an MFA from

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

. From 1991 to 2005, Kemp lived and worked in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

, 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 art, contemporary arts center in San Francisco, California, United States. Located in Yerba Buena Gardens, YBCA features visual art, performance, and film/video that cel ...

. More recently, he was chair of the MFA in Visual Studies at

Pacific Northwest College of Art The Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) is an art school of Willamette University and is located in Portland, Oregon. Established in 1909, the art school grants Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees and graduate degrees including the Master of Fine ...

PNCA in

Portland, Oregon Portland ( ) is the List of cities in Oregon, most populous city in the U.S. state of Oregon, located in the Pacific Northwest region. Situated close to northwest Oregon at the confluence of the Willamette River, Willamette and Columbia River, ...

. 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 university, public research university in Richmond, Virginia, United States. VCU was founded in 1838 as the medical department of Hampden–Sydney College, becoming the Medical College of Virgin ...

. 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 (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

at the

Studio Museum The Studio Museum in Harlem is an African-American art museum at 144 West 125th Street in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, United States. Founded in 1968, the museum collects, preserves and interprets art created by African A ...

'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, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...

, The

in Harlem, The

Berkeley Art Museum The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA, formerly abbreviated as BAM/PFA) are a combined art museum, repertory movie theater, and film archive associated with the University of California, Berkeley. Lawrence Rinder was Director ...

, The

Portland Art Museum The Portland Art Museum (PAM) is an art museum in downtown Portland, Oregon, United States. The Portland Art Museum has 240,000 square feet (22,000 m2), with more than 112,000 square feet (10,400 m2) of gallery space. The museum’s permanent c ...

, 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 ...

, the Fine Arts Collection at the

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Davis, California, United States. It is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University ...

, 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 is a private foundation formed 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 Gr ...

. 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 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation was established in 1985 for the purpose of providing funding to visual artists internationally to further their artistic practices. It was established at the bequest of Lee Krasner, who was an American abstract expr ...

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

Art Matters Art is a diverse range of cultural activity centered around ''works'' utilizing creative or imaginative talents, which are expected to evoke a worthwhile experience, generally through an expression of emotional power, conceptual ideas, tec ...

, 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