Arts & Culture Magazine - January/February 2008 - (Page 26) Exhibitions : : Kevin Costello Opening January 9: Showing at Mack b Projects. By Tobey Albright. In our present world of art, Kevin Costello is what you might call a Renaissance man, or a polymath—a person of wide-ranging knowledge or learning. Costello simultaneously fulfills the multiple roles of the artist, the critic and the teacher. Finding a balance between these roles can result in a densely complicated entanglement of intentions and direction, but can also give way to a more inclusive understanding of the way in which these separate fields inform one another and create a sustainable body of production. Similar to the multiple roles Costello inhabits within the art community, is the multiple bodies of work he produces at one time. In his exhibition at Mack b Projects, entitled “How to Find and Seize a Doppelganger,” Costello playfully presents three distinct bodies of work. The first is a formal application of “crazy paving,” a type of paving made up of irregularly shaped slabs of stone or concrete. With these assemblages of found objects and marble, Costello makes an effort to re-contextualize the stark and alienating characteristics of minimalism through a domestic association to the landscape and his personal history. He further poeticizes the language of minimalism by assigning the work titles such as Ozymandias, Ms. Understanding, and In Memorium: G.I. Joe and his brother Tommy Atkins. These titles refer to realms of experience outside of sculpture while simultaneously hinting at Costello’s sensitivity to the current state of politics without generating the propaganda of an overt political agenda. The interplay of language and form is further realized through the process of integrating discordant variables by reemphasizing the importance of gravity and chance. In the second body of work, Costello employs the use of a “plumb-bob,” an instrument that has been used since the time of the ancient Egyptians to ensure constructions were perfectly upright. By conflating the practical use of the tool, as both a means and material, and the graphic properties of drawing, Costello draws further on the properties of perspective, shifting its presence on the wall from graphic illusion to cognitive experience. Costello’s third body of work is his most playful and reminiscent of his use of reflexivity as process. The “Doppelganger” photographs find Costello acting on the grounds of the Ringling Museum of Art via a triad of activities that reanimate his relationship with performance while revealing his neo-classicist nature. These images enact a metaphorical folding of history that occurs over and over again, employing humor as a significant device for interpreting the trauma of history. Kevin Costello showing at Mack b Projects opens January 9. Mack b Projects is located at 500 Tallevast Road Suite 107. Call 941.359.0654 for more information. To view more of Kevin Costello’s work, visit www.kevincostelloart.com or www.mackbgallery.com. Left to Right: Stone Garden 1.2, Stone, 12x12x5. There Was A Time 5, Oil Pastel 30x22. 26 : : arts and culture magazine http://www.kevincostelloart.com http://www.mackbgallery.com
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