The 5+5 Gallery is proud to present the first New York solo exhibition of Brian Kenny.
The show features a new series of large-scale drawings on old American police shooting targets. The drawings, made with the street-tested mediums such as sharpies, paint-markers, spray paint and tape, are layered over various images of gun and knife-wielding paper “criminals.” Kenny’s Targets act as background and catalyst for his rabid layering of line, text and figuration. The imagery explores and deconstructs the world of sports, the military, and urban cultures. Bling and guns; wrestlers and sneakers; soldiers and pimps—all and more are depicted in frenetic, obsessive image-making. These Targets often include text “cut-up” oscillating between autobiography and the absurd. They are a bold social response, the artist’s “firing back” at the cultural fixations of sex, violence, politics, and cyber media.
A number of Targets were created in collaboration with fellow artists: Slava Mogutin, Gio Black Peter, Christophe Chemin, Desi Santiago, Bearded Cunt of assume vivid astro focus, Jason Farrer, Sebastiano Mauri, and Billy Miller.
Accompanying this show, Kenny is presenting his first book of eleven etchings and poetry entitled, Hatha Yoga for Ghetto Boys and Animals, printed by Raphael Fodde. Achieving a child-like ethos, this limited edition book combines three highly distinct subjects: yoga, animals, and hip-hop.
Brian Kenny was born in 1982 in Heidelburg, Germany, on an American military base. While growing up, he traveled extensively with his family. As a teenager, he was a competitive gymnast. He went to Oberlin Conservatory on an opera scholarship. Brian works across drawing, painting, sculpture, text, sound, video, and blogging. In 2004, he moved to New York where he began collaborating with Slava Mogutin under the name SUPERM. They are responsible for site-specific, multimedia gallery and museum shows in New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, London, Moscow, Oslo, Bergen, and León, Spain.
