Exhibition Information

OPTIONS
2019 Acrylic on Canvas 190x134 cm

UNPREPARED
2019 Acrylic on Canvas 190x134 cm

RAWWWR
2019 Acrylic and Bingo Papers on Canvas 190x134 cm

FRENNN
2019 Acrylic on Canvas 110x110 cm

			▶Exhibition introduction
Johyun Hwarang-Haeundae will hold a solo exhibition of Richard Kennedy’s ‘missed connections’ from February 19, 2020 to March 22, 2020. Richard Kennedy, based in New York, is a young modern artist who is noted for his vigorous activities in various fields, including contemporary art, composition, opera screenplay and production. The exhibition presents a total of eight paintings derived from the production of" no-observation opera." Through opera, a white-centered culture of writing, we want to metaphorically express the lives of black people and sex minorities like ourselves in American society.
Richard Kennedy spent his childhood in Middletown, Ohio, and watched a performance at the Sorg Opera House from the third grade of elementary school. At that time, he fell into an opera that could be seen as a two-dollar dress rehearsal and later began studying the interactions of various symbols that the opera had. The opera is perfected by the interrelationship of the drama, poetic lyrics, the singer's singing ability, beautiful notes, costumes representing the times, and grand stage equipment. The writer said he experiences the roles of countless people within the structure of the opera as a reason for his love of opera, and through this he can create a new world.

In the Berlin Perez Projects, Richard Kennedy presented "G)hosting," an exhibition featuring "The Audienceless Opera" through various materials such as painting, video and sculpture. Usually when you think of opera, first, visitors sit in their seats, watch performances, and imagine scenes featuring actors in colorful costumes with grand background music. However, the artist chose the gallery as the stage, a rather unique venue for the opera, and performed an opera like "First Meeting" with a stranger. Realized in the White Cube exhibition hall, not on stage, the opera consisted of a fence and a monitor, sculpture and painting spanning it. The bizarre dissonance that flows out of the monitor makes the audience more nervous, and sculptures and paintings stimulate their vision and amplify their anxiety. Also, between fences leading in several directions, visitors can decide and watch the movement in various directions themselves. These open-ended operas lead the audience in a completely different direction, leading them to seek a new ‘first meeting’.

The painting will be presented with a libretto of opera derived from the production of "(G)hosting," an opera series that has no audience. Painting works such as Libreto have created a new code as well as physically creating Libreto's world through a medium called painting. Painting is a medium for conveying the play, such as a stage device that elevates the atmosphere of opera, a synopsis that is offered to make it easier to understand the story with a chorus that makes the music richer. The text in the work is also the language used by the gender minority community and an abstracted code to avoid censorship by the media. These languages are bleached and sometimes difficult to read and understand. A closer look at each text has its own handwriting and size, just like a character. For a writer who describes dancing as an act of painting without a brush, painting may be a remnant of dancing stuffed on the surface of a canvas. Uniquely, he dances to techno music, stacks a layer of paint on the canvas, repeatedly writing text. And at the end, use a big brush to sweep down the entire canvas. Through this final process, a boundary, a kind of membrane, is formed between the viewer and the message that the painting conveys. This painstaking work of producing pictures and text may be a metaphor for the language used by the sex minority community.
Repeatedly appearing in the work, the words reiterate the boundaries of practice and on stage practice of opera performances, such as the act of reading Libreto over and over again. Just as various differences exist by different emotions, such as accents, tones and the size of the voice, when a person repeats the same word, in a performance that has a set time unlike rehearsals, only one subject and identity refined through countless repeated exercises will be staged. But in Lee Chad Kennedy’s work, it appears to be a shaky existence, not a sure player or identity, and the author asks whether a decisive ignition really exists or has a standard to determine it. We don't know from his work whether the painting is set to fire or ignite. It is a drawing that induces participation by the viewer, either implicitly or intentionally. It reminds the viewer of the senses, but it slips in the center and delays the judgment of value without setting
Rather than presenting new shapes of nationality, race and gender identity, Richard Kennedy appeals to life’s potential for his work to develop into a variety of directions through the act of viewing and firing pictures and text.


▶Introduction to artist
Richard Kennedy, b. 1985 is an American contemporary artist who works in various fields of art, such as contemporary art, composition and opera scripts. Working as a base in New York, he projects the lives of black sex minorities in American society through art genres such as painting, sculpture, installation and media art. He completed his master's degree at the Milton Avery Institute at Bard College, and in 2019 participated in the MacDowell Colony of Peterborough, Newark's Mana Contemporary and the Berlin Open Forum. In the same year, the first individual exhibition of his life was successfully completed at the Perez Projects in Berlin, while Gallery 2 in Seoul hosted the first individual exhibition in Korea. In addition, he has recently developed his potential as a young writer by planning performances at MoMA PS1, The Sheed, The Kitchen and The Studio Museum in Harlem in New York.