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• Bruce Knecht
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Chris Kienke

Chris Kienke received his BFA in illustration and design from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1994 and his MFA in painting from Southern Illinois University in 2000. His work has been displayed internationally in the 6th Sharjah International Art Biennial in 2003 and again in the 7th Sharjah International Art Biennial in 2005, as well as the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, the Armory Center in Pasadena and the exhibition Here and Now at the Sharjah Art Museum in Dubai. Collections such as the ABN Amro Bank, the Drik Institute of Photography in Bangladesh, the Sharjah Art Gallery and the Patrick Allan Fraser of Hospitalfield Trust in Scotland all house works by Kienke. In addition to making art, Kienke is currently a Professor of Foundations Studies at the Savannah College of Art and Design.




Artist's Statement:

The creation and evolution of a visual language is at the core of a visual artist’s work. It is this very notion of working to form a singular visual language that I began with and now have rejected.
I am no longer using a singular visual language. When I look at how my working habits have developed over the past ten years I see a process of experimentation and application where each project lends itself to a particular medium and process. The integrity of each piece is linked to the medium it is completed in. The often, radical differences in subject matter with each project are a reflection of the experiences and situations which I have encountered over the years. Gerhard Richter asserts that when faced with the mass of imagery available today, all one can do is try to order it. I feel that I have not only been faced with mass imagery, signage, internet etc, but also massive changes in my cultural environment and physical location. Change in my environment rarely shows up immediately in my work. Rather, it occurs slowly, revealing itself over time. This allows visual ideas to take on new forms, meanings, and context. It allows me to work with multiple visual languages incorporating materials, situations and contexts as they present themselves.

In the development of each body of work it is essential to continue exploring new concepts and forms. New ideas and methods enter into the process through the act of material exploration and application. How do we go about recognizing value in the unintended, the peripheral, the shifted, the suddenly revealed, the accidentally juxtaposed? These questions are vital to my studio practice and a broader understanding of creative practice. There is a certain approach to studio methodology that has evolved in my work over the years and has found its way into my approach to teaching studio courses as well. My students find through practice that they can establish situations where accidents are not only likely to happen but where they can recognize the value in a cut, tear, smudge, fold, transfer, overlap, stain, etc. I have found that I move through situations and experiences in my life looking for elements that parallel the formal concerns of the cut, tear, juxtapose, or smudge. Ultimately success has emerged through my ability to learn through engagement, to abandon preconceptions, to allow accidents to happen and to recognize value in the unintended. An accident once it has occurred is either erased or incorporated either way is has ceased to be an accident the moment it has become considered. Anton Ehrenzweig said in the Hidden Order of Art that “really new ideas do not allow a predictable use of the medium. True craftsmanship does not impose its will on the medium, but explores its varying responses in the kind of conversation between equals”. I agree, of the choices I have made some of the most important and fundamental are those related to media. Choices about media matter not solely because a particular medium may be best suited for communicating an idea or presenting a point of view but because media are bound together with language and meaning.