Arnold Kemp

Gallery Affiliations: PDX Contemporary Art

Region: Pacific Coast

I believe it was Hannah Arendt who wrote that, “without a space of appearance and without trusting in action and speech as a mode of being together, neither reality of one’s self, of one’s own identity, nor the reality of the surrounding world can be established.” My combined practice of research and experimentation reflects on the self, hybridized by and mingled with our culture of contradiction and uncertainty.

The emphasis in my work is on process, experimentation, and content where the end product is a by-product of experimentation that continues outside of the studio in how the work meets the public. This often happens outside of the formal gallery system in the form of performances, limited edition artists’ books and art objects. At the heart of my process of probing issues of personal and collective realities is a desire and potential for locating imagination, thought and emotion in objects such as these black paintings made by, myself, a black man.