kj@kennyjensen.com

General Statement

I am a multidisciplinary conceptual artist and amateur naturalist with a lifelong, deep connection to untamed natural Florida. The primary muse and source of material for my practice is our family land “The Floating Woods” in rural Gulf Hammock, FL where my eccentric, inventive grandparents dwelled and engaged in (what I now consider as) outsider art projects throughout my formation. The significance of which can be understood as“…the intimacy the mind makes with the place it awakens in”(Wendell Berry).

With my attention and my creative practices I am most interested in experiencing and sharing the wildness, curiosity, mystery and wonder present in common, overlooked, ‘more than human’, phenomena that surround us. My artwork seeks to explore and invite viewers into the unseen peripheral zones just outside of everyday awareness, between certainties, where seemingly separate and contradictory realities become intertwined and intrinsically related.

After 20 years of wide ranging explorations in photography, experimental music, video, sculpture, the collection and display of found-objects, and large scale installation, in 2022 I chose to focus all my creative energies to grow a self-sustaining oil painting practice. Painting has become a means for me to synthesize my pluralistic polyphony of interests and concerns into a more manageable, relatable and sustainable form. The mediated lens remains conceptually integral to my process. I use extensive photography in the wilderness as plein air to gather reference material and inspiration for my studio practice.

My diverse cultural influences include visionaries throughout the history of music, literature, cinema, and nature/ science writings. Yet from pre-modern to contemporary there are connecting roots; from Bach to Autechre, from the fantasy of George Macdonald to the speculative fiction of Jeff Vandermeer, from the phenomenology of mystics and philosophers through the ages to the poetry of Carlo Rovelli’s particle physics, from the landscape paintings of Bruegel, Friedrich, Ernst, and Kiefer to the dialectical (both in the field and gallery etc.) practices of Smithson, Goldsworthy and Dion and back again. However, of all artists and thinkers that have formed me, the films and writings of the auteur director Andrei Tarkovsky have had the most profound and lasting impact.

Current Work

The “Peripheral Landscapes”series are large scale cinematic forest scenes which are rendered ecstatically credible to reality yet remain out of reach and ambiguous - hauntingly familiar yet inscrutable. They are resistant to a passive glance or the certainty based algorithms that control our tiny screens. A theatre backdrop foregrounded with an empty stage. A cinematic mise en scene where the actors have not yet arrived. A halfway state. Full of absence. Up close the surface is very active with large layered brush strokes like particles of light vibrating at varied frequencies on the quantum field. The subject is the field of perception itself and the one who perceives in active relationship with the painted object as a whole and all the space around it. The “Fugue” in the titles refers to the contrapuntal paths of inquiry as well as to experiencing a ‘fugue state’ outside of time and the normal edges of the ‘self’.

Bio

I am currently an MFA Candidate at The University of South Florida. I live in St. Petersburg, FL with my wife Maggie (who is a farmer and lifelong nurturer of plants and animals), and young son Cedar with our bunny, and 6 hens. After completing my MFA we are moving to our family land “The Floating Woods” in rural Gulf Hammock, FL, to grow a farm and artist residency focused on fostering deeper connections to the more than human world.

I have been active in the Tampa Bay Area arts community for over 20 years as an exhibiting artist, grass roots organizer, curator, art handler and museum preparator for many of the area museums, galleries, and schools - including the Morean Arts Center, The Studio @620, The Museum of Fine Arts, University of Tampa, and more. Most recently I was a member or Sister Art Studios.

I have had several well received solo and two person exhibitions and have participated in dozens of group exhibitions both locally and regionally. I have received multiple artist grants and have completed multiple public art and private commissions. I have also been invited to give dozens of local and virtual lectures, and have been the subject of multiple interviews and publications.