Kim Manfredi
Birdseye, 36 diameter, oil on wood, 2010
The Plume, oil on canvas, 36″ x 48″, 2010
Fanscape, oil on wood, 18″ x 24″, 2010
Curved Source, oil on canvas, 36″ x 48″, 2010
Occurrence, oil on wood, 16″ x 20″, 2010
Supernova, oil on canvas, 48″ x 72″, 2010
Structure, oil on wood, 16″ x 20″, 2010
Artist Statement
My work, with its emphasis on bulges, bumps, and contaminates, primarily illustrates boundaries – boundaries respected and boundaries crossed. Permeability and thick skin inhabit each end of the spectrum. My art charts barriers and contaminates, it maps galaxies and star clusters; it is intentionally ambiguous in its relationship to the microcosm and the macrocosm. Through controlled thought I add specificity to a poured blob (tumor, star, body, galaxy) or the drilled shape. There are blobs emerging from blobs, and shapes separating themselves from one another. The materials and process create the reality, they reflect the world as I know it, and as a result describe my experience.
Italian Povera artists like Anselmo, Calzolari, Merz, Penone, and Zorio addressed the phenomenological world through gravity, magnetism, and energy. Furthermore, Fontana’s cuts and holes create boundaries relevant to understanding the mental in physical terms. My bulges or drillings address the mental (thought) through the spiritual (breath) and the physical (body). After the blob has existed on the canvas for some time, change begins. The change can take many forms: a sag (gravity), a drip (magnetism) or a drawing (energy) is born. I notice these changes and tilt the canvas or use specially designed scalpels to stab the blob. I then use the creative energy of my breath or the electric drill to direct the flow of the paint or the E.K.G.-like drawings, executed on graph paper. In astronomy, images from space appear as symbols and frequencies on computers before they are born onto photographic paper; similarly these maps are born from the paintings’ own awareness. The blob is not more important than the graph and the graph not more important than the blob; exhibited side-by-side the two coexist, one bred by the other. The Cartesian meets the organic and the heat of their contact creates the energy of my work.
Informel, Arte Povera and Zero are the traditions from which my work emerges. These movements embraced the world. They studied it, experimented with it, understood it and as a result emerged with a new way of exhibiting reality; they created a portal from within which the world could be perceived. It is from this portal, free from formal concerns or art conventions that I pour my pour, drill my holes, stab my painting, and measure its life on a graph. Through immersing, sagging, burning and blowing I move into an experience of painting that expresses the ever-changing process of existence.
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