Art / Kenseth Armstead

:: Three Works ::

From the artist

:: Account ::

The Yad­do 2016 res­i­den­cy man­date was to sur­prise myself. Most of the projects and bod­ies of work under­tak­en up until that point were mono­chrome, found, mut­ed col­or most­ly, site spe­cif­ic and/or his­to­ry focused. The con­cep­tu­al rig­or of con­nect­ing to a site or his­toric body was always the key dri­ver. This body of work would be dif­fer­ent. It was strict­ly exper­i­men­tal and for FUN. This had nev­er hap­pened before. There were no rules, or for that mat­ter, goals. Each day set up new pud­dles or twists of met­al cut up in the stu­dio and then embed­ded in the paint. Each twist led away from know­ing. The Yad­do exper­i­ments are a com­plete body of work. In sev­en weeks, I com­plet­ed some one hun­dred plus works (they still have not all been count­ed) that I do not know. They know me. 

Kenseth Arm­stead has cre­at­ed provoca­tive mul­ti­me­dia instal­la­tion art for three decades. These works have been exhib­it­ed in sev­er­al his­toric exhi­bi­tions which include Black Male: Rep­re­sen­ta­tions of Mas­culin­i­ty in Con­tem­po­rary Art at the Whit­ney Muse­um of Amer­i­can Art & Armand Ham­mer Muse­um in 1994; the Berlin Vide­oFest in 1994; Frames of Ref­er­ence: Reflec­tions on Media at The Solomon R. Guggen­heim Muse­um in 1999; Race in Dig­i­tal Space at the MIT List Visu­al Arts Cen­ter & Stu­dio Muse­um in Harlem in 2001; Veni Vidi Video at the Stu­dio Muse­um in Harlem (their first video exhi­bi­tion) in 2003; Open House: Work­ing in Brook­lyn at the Brook­lyn Muse­um in 2004; “Edit­ed at EAI”: Video Inter­fer­ence (cel­e­brat­ing 45 years of their award win­ning col­lec­tion) at Elec­tron­ic Arts Inter­mix in 2016; and most recent­ly, the crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed Mod­ern Hero­ics: 75 years of African Amer­i­can Expres­sion­ism at the Newark Muse­um. In each case, Armstead’s work has been includ­ed in piv­otal explo­rations of Amer­i­can cul­ture, emerg­ing fields, gen­der pol­i­tics, the New York art scene, eth­nic­i­ty, artis­tic inno­va­tion, his­to­ry, and insti­tu­tion-defin­ing moments. Armstead’s videos, draw­ings, and sculp­tures are includ­ed in the col­lec­tions of the Cen­tre Pom­pi­dou, African Amer­i­can Muse­um in Dal­las, Texas, The Newark Muse­um, and numer­ous oth­er pub­lic and pri­vate collections.