180.34 x 91.44 cm
Carter continues his series Untitled Relationships – multi-part works of collaged mass-produced materials, drawings, spray paint, and glitter – inviting viewers to define their own relationships between casual and formal elements. He positions fetishized objects like fat shoelaces, track pants, or Timberlands as the new materials of postmodern pastiche. Referencing iconic moments in modernist art and design, Carter turns contemporary culture on itself, empowering these common materials to surpass their casual status. In his new densely layered paintings, Carter’s formal treatment of paint (pouring, peeling, sculpting, weaving, gluing, nailing, etc) pushes the physical limits of the “flat” medium. Though Carter’s abstracts are aesthetically formal his use of casual signifiers to make marks breaks with modernist theory by conflating the subjective and objective nature of materials.
Kendell Carter (American, born New Orleans 1970, lives Long Beach, CA) has an MFA from California State University in Long Beach, an Environmental Design BA from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, and a BFA from the Atlanta College of Art. Carter has had exhibitions at institutions including the Savannah College of Art and Design, the Laguna Art Museum, the Hammer Museum, and the California African American Museum in Los Angeles. His work has been reviewed in Art in America, ArtForum.com, and the Los Angeles Times among other publications. In 2012, Carter had a solo exhibition titled We at the University Galleries at Illinois State University, and was featured in the group exhibition Stretching the Limits at SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA.
