KENN BASS and MIKE ROGERS

Video by Kenn Bass, Drawings by Mike Rogers

January 13 - February 5, 2012

Kenn Bass, Actual Position, 2010 wood, metal,
magnets, motor 30 ¾ x 29 x 46 in.

Brooklyn-based artist, Kenn Bass and Mike Rogers from Los Angeles can no longer be called young artists. For many years now, both have enjoyed a consistent following thanks to their recurrently innovative activity and the attention it inspires, including in Brooklyn and New York, where Kenn Bass was previously represented by the now defunct Roebling Hall, and where Mike Rogers has regularly presented his work at Parker’s Box. That said, it couldn’t be denied that the respective pioneering work of both artists deserves greater recognition today, and it can only be hoped that recent important exhibitions might begin to bring that.

Kenn Bass is currently participating in a groundbreaking exhibition titled Animal that is touring Canadian institutions and was mounted by a long-time supporter of his work, the noted curator and critic, Corinna Ghaznavi.

In 2010, Mike Rogers produced a solo show for his UK gallery, Rachmaninoff’s, and in 2011-12, along with his London-based collaborator, Dustin Ericksen, he showed the important ongoing work Cups (1996-present), in a prestigious touring exhibition in Germany including showings at the Künsthalle, Düsseldorf and Künstmuseum, Stuttgart among other venues. The work was also shown in a different form at the Museo Carillo Gil in Mexico City.

Parker’s Box is delighted to have the opportunity of showing recent works by both artists, featuring a sculpture and a new video work by Kenn Bass, and a series of 75 drawings by Mike Rogers. The work of both artists frequently deals with the world that confronts the individual, and in some way, the fragility of both the individual and at the same time, that of the world in which he/she lives.

Rogers often gets inspiration from his own “banal” existence, (holding down a regular job and providing for his family in the predictable suburbs of California) in a truly eclectic practice that includes videos, photo-works (using images gleaned from the Internet), as well as abstract faux-folksy wood sculptures, and an extensive and quite obsessive drawing practice. The works on view at Parker’s Box come from the latter category and are taken from the recent series he made, documenting all the nuclear power plants of the United States.

Each of the colored pencil drawings is monochrome, made using one of a small range of different colors, and the style that Rogers has used for these works is reminiscent of educational drawings from old textbooks or instructional manuals, endowing them with a nostalgic veneer that immediately seems to be weirdly in contradiction with the content. This off-kilter “romanticization” conversely focuses our attention on the recurrently controversial nature of the subject, and this is accentuated by the fact that the artist’s position is never directly clarified, which of course is so often the case in some of the most resonant art work, (from Damian Hirst’s shark, to Francis Picabia’s Holy Virgin ink splash, for example).

In Mike Rogers’ drawings, the presence of humankind and their influence, (for better or for worse) is unavoidable, and it could even be said that the representations of the buildings accentuate the presence of mankind, and all of its issues, by the very absence of humans in these pictures. Here, Rogers has not differentiated between obsolete and working power plants, indicating that he sees them all as symbolizing the same aspects of human activity on Earth, and what that means to each of us as individuals.

Something not dissimilar goes on in Copse the new video installation by Kenn Bass, even though the imagery is of dense woodland – evoking the unchained strength of Nature, in contrast to the harnessed power of nuclear energy, imprisoned in concrete fortresses by the will of humans. For this film, Kenn Bass used footage shot in remote or abandoned outdoor spaces primarily ancient forests, and the images have been overlaid with audio derived from clandestine radio transmissions. His editorial process includes paring down and juxtaposing images in tight succession, and removing most traces of the human voice from the radio transmissions, resulting in a work that becomes an abstracted analysis and meditation on place and isolation; specificity and placelessness.

This whittling down and focusing on the world we are aware of, whether familiar, sought after, or known about only through vicarious experience (including through screens and technology) create what the artist refers to as a “hybrid territory”, a kind of trippy or dreamlike interpretation of the world we know, ultimately offering a heightened awareness of what’s around us.

In addition to Copse, Bass has installed a sculpture, titled Actual Position. This work, a quirky, idiosyncratic piece assembled a few years ago, is made up of an old table, a pair of powerful magnets, a motor and a scribe (small needle-like piece of metal).

The piece came about through a mixture of serendipity, trial and error and a willingness to allow objects to discover and develop their own artistic presence and actions. The diminutive scribe commands all the attention, leaning vertically as it reacts to the opposing magnetic fields, wandering erratically and inexplicably around the aged and varnished table surface, like a lone actor on a vast stage, or like someone lost in the desert: “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players:” (Shakespeare).

From their respective Western vantage points in New York City and Los Angeles, it’s interesting to note that both artists ultimately speak in their different ways about the isolation of the individual in the face of the world, whether in relation to the planet or the world created by man. Perhaps this comes partly from the fact that it’s far easier to be anonymous in a crowded city than in places in the world where there are few people. The isolation of the individual is also paralleled by the artist’s existence, and in this way, Kenn Bass and Mike Rogers bear sole responsibility for what they do, holding up a mirror to our world that sharpens the image of what we know to a point when we can only become nauseous (cf: Sartre’s Nausea). Perhaps we would do well to pay more attention to what it is they are explaining as we enter this year that once again will include the end of the world.