Kevin Clarke
Biography
| Born | 1953 New York, New York |
| Education | 1976 B.F.A., Sculpture, The Cooper Union, New York |
Solo Exhibitions
| 2008 | "New Circles", Galerie Rothamel Frankfurt am Main |
| 2005 | "Becoming Human". Sara Tecchia Roma-New York. NYC. Gallery |
| 2005 | "Dust To DNA." Installation. Sara Tecchia Roma-New York. NYC off-site |
| 2003 | "Genetic Reveries" Janos Gat Gallery, New York. Catalog. |
| 2003 | "Kevin Clarke- Portraits of the Future" Hecksher Museum of Art, NY. |
| 2002 | "Dust to DNA, Kevin Clarke and Mikey Flowers 9/11" International Center of Photography, New York. Catalog. |
| 2002 | "Kevin Clarke" Galeria de Arte Pillar Parra, Madrid and Photo Espagne '02 |
| 2002 | "Kevin Clarke" B-W Bank, Stuttgart, Germany |
| 2002 | "Kevin Clarke" art frankfurt. Galerie Michael Sturm |
| 2002 | "Frankfurt Meets New York" Mayor's Honor at Beethoven Hall, NY |
| 2001 | "Fantasia in the Key of Berger, Opus ATCG" Tribes Gallery, New York |
| 2001 | Atrium project: 6 Portraits. B-W Bank Stuttgart, Permanent installation. Catalog. |
| 2000 | "Kevin Clarke", Galerie Michael Sturm, Stuttgart |
| 1999 | "The Invisible Body", Museum Wiesbaden, Germany. Catalog. |
| 1998 | "Drawing (blood)" Karlstrasse, Wiesbaden, Germany |
| 1997 | "Vernal Passage", Grand Salon, New York. Catalog. |
| 1996 | "From the Blood of Poets", Curt Marcus Gallery, New York |
| 1990 | "The Red Couch", Tampa Museum of Art, Florida |
| 1988 | "The Apotheosis of the Couch", Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York |
| 1986 | "The Red Couch", Fotoforum in Leinwandhaus, Frankfurt, Germany |
| 1985 | "The Red Couch", Represented U.S. photography at the Ampitheatre, Summer Rencontres in Arles, France |
| 1985 | "The Red Couch", Galleria Il Diaframma, Milan, Italy |
| 1985 | "The Red Couch", Galerie Lanterna Majika, Stockholm, Sweden |
| 1984 | "The Red Couch", International Center of Photography, Bookstore |
| 1984 | "The Red Couch", Harris Gallery, Houston, Texas |
| 1983 | "The Red Couch", The Photographer's Gallery, London |
| 1983 | "The Red Couch", Galerie RZA, Dusseldorf, Germany |
| 1980 | "Kaufhauswelt", Frankfurter Kunstverein in "Steinernes Haus", Germany |
Group Exhibitions
| 2006 | "Happy Birthday Nam June Paik" Nassauische Kunstverein, Wiesbaden, Germany |
| 2005 | "Touché" Galerie Michael Sturm, Stuttgart, Germany |
| 2004 | "A Promise of Photography" Moscow House of Photography, Russia. |
| 2004 | "Franz von Lenbach and the Art of Today" Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen |
| 2004 | "Art is not Untouchable" Pablo's Birthday, N.Y. |
| 2004 | "Relating to Photography. Highlights from private Collections" Fotografie Forum International, Frankfurt, Germany |
| 2003 | "How Human? Life in the Post-Genome Era" ICP, New York, |
| 2003 | "From Code to Commodity", NY Academy of Science |
| 2003 | "Face To Face, Masterworks From The Collection of the DZ Bank." Galerie der Stadt Stuttgart. Germany. |
| 2003 | Fotosommer Stuttgart, Galerie Sturm. |
| 2003 | "Four Plus: Writing DNA " Wellcome Trust, London |
| 2003 | "Paradise Now" Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA |
| 2003 | "Paradise Now: Picturing the Genetic Revolution" Tulane U., New Orleans, LA |
| 2002 | "American Photography" Museum for Concrete Art, Ingolstadt, Germany |
| 2002 | Berlin Art, Art fair, Arco Madrid. Art fair, Art Frankfurt. Art fair |
| 2002 | "Paradise Now" Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA |
| 2002 | "Return of Beauty" Kristen Fredrickson Contemporary Art, New York |
| 2001 | "Blood: Power, Politics, and Pathology" Schirn Kunsthalle and Museum for Applied Art, Frankfurt. |
| 2001 | "Under the Skin- Biological Transformations in Contemporary Art" Stiftung Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg |
| 2001 | "Genomic Art: Portrait of the 21st Century" UC Santa Cruz |
| 2001 | "Paradise Now" Tang Art Museum, Saratoga, N.Y. |
| 2001 | "The Promise of Photography" Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany |
| 2000 | "Paradise Now" Exit Art, N.Y. Catalog. |
| 2000 | "Do We Know Each Other?" Kunsthalle Nuremberg, Germany |
| 2000 | "Bridget Reiley and Kevin Clarke" Brussels Art Fair, Galerie Sturm |
| 1998 | "Gene Worlds", Portrait of John Cage, Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, Germany. Catalog. |
| 1998 | "Power by Consent", artcenter of South Florida, Miami Beach, Fl. |
| 1997 | "Multiple Identities", Nexus Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta |
| 1997 | "Willem de Kooning, The Late Paintings, The 1980’s" Museum of Modern Art, NY |
| 1996 | "Body of Work", Genaro Ambrosino Gallery, Florida |
| 1996 | "The Portrait Now", Elga Wimmer Gallery , Madrid Art Fair, Spain |
| 1995 | "Group Exhibition", Curt Marcus Gallery, New York |
| 1995 | "The Portrait Now", Elga Wimmer Gallery, New York |
| 1994 | "Gene Culture", Fordham College at Lincoln Center, New York |
| 1988 | "Out Into Space." Condeso/Lawler Gallery, NY |
| 1985 | "New Color Photography" Brooklyn Museum, New York |
| 1985 | "Private Treasures", San Antonio Art Museum, Texas |
| 1983 | "Kaufhauswelt", Diverse Works, Houston, Texas |
| 1983 | "Willem de Kooning, Retrospektiv" Akademie der Kunst, Berlin. |
| 1980 | "POOL" Artist’s Space, New York Catalog. |
| 1979 | "Journey to Mauritius", collaboration with Jochen Gerz |
| 1977 | "documenta 6", 100 days Freie Universitaet, Joseph Beuys |
| 1976 | "Pyramids", Collaboration with Yoko Ono, New York & Yucatan, Mexico |
| 1976 | "Das Kollektiv" Exhibition and Happenings, Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland |
Selected Books by Kevin Clarke
KUNST UND MEDIEN, MATERIALIEN ZUR DOCUMENTA 6, 1977 Stadtzeitung und Verlag, Kassel. Documenta 6 anti-catalog and prize-winning best seller. 300pp. Text and photographs.KAUFHAUSWELT (Department Store World), 1980 Schirmer + Mosel Verlag, Munich. Black & white photographs by Kevin Clarke in Kaufhaus Des Westens (KaDeWe) in West Berlin. Text by Hans J. Scheurer.
THE RED COUCH, A PORTRAIT OF AMERICA, 1984, Alfred van der Marck Editions/ Harper & Row. Photographs of Americans on a red velvet couch. Photos by Kevin Clarke and Horst Wackerbarth, text by William Least Heat Moon.
PORTRAITS, KEVIN CLARKE, 1998 ( x+c ). Portraits including From the Blood of Poets and Portrait of John Cage. Text by Alan Jones.
THE INVISIBLE BODY, 1999, Museum Wiesbaden. 118pp. Twenty-six portraits of people from New York and Frankfurt by Kevin Clarke plus texts and background history by Dr. Volker Rattemeyer, Dr. Renate Petzinger, and Luminita Sabau.. Illustrated.
MIKEY FLOWERS 9/11; ASHES TO ASHES, DUST TO DNA, 2002, ars genetica, inc Michael Collarone and Kevin Clarke. Vivid photographs of the attack on the World Trade Center and 16 genetic meditations based on survivor’s DNA sequences. 96 pages, Illustrated.
Seleced Catalogs, Publications, & Reviews
| 2005 | "KUNST AUS DEM LABOR" Zum Verhaeltnis von Kunst und Wissenschaft im Zeitalter der Technoscience. Ingeborg Reichle. Springer Wien NewYork. Illustrated. |
| 2005 | "ART ET BIOTECHNOLOGIES" Louise Poissant and Ernestine Daubner. University of Quebec Press. CD Rom. |
| 2003 | "GENETIC REVERIES" Catalog, exhibition at Janos Gat Gallery, New York. Illustrated. |
| 2003 | "THE MOLECULAR GAZE; ART IN THE GENETIC AGE" Suzanne Anker and Dorothy Nelkin. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. Illustrated. |
| 2002 | "ART IN OUR HOUSE- 7 PORTRAITS BY KEVIN CLARKE". B-W Bank Stuttgart. Catalog, illustrated. |
| 2002 | "KEVIN CLARKE". B-W Bank Stuttgart. Catalog, illustrated. Text by Ralf Christofori |
| 2002 | "PARADISE NOW, PICTURING THE GENETIC REVOLUTION" Marvin Heiferman and Carole Kismaric. Tang Museum, Skidmore College. 124pp. Illustrated. |
| 2002 | LOSS AND PROFIT: WE REMEMBER, WE CREATE, WE MAKE A BUCK. HOW SHOULD WE FEEL? By Tim Carman. Outlook page, The Washington Post. 8/25/02 |
| 2002 | EL PUNTO DE LAS ARTES "K.C., la alusion como estrategia de construccion retratistica" Madrid, July. Carlota De Alfonso. Review. |
| 2002 | ABC CULTURAL "El retrato metafisico" Fernando Martin Galan. Review. |
| 2001 | "UNDER THE SKIN-BIOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATIONS IN CONTEMPORARY ART" Stiftung Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Hatje Cantz. Catalog. Illustrated. |
| 2001 | "PARADISE NOW". Catalog by JGS Foundation, New York. Illustrated. |
| 2001 | "BLOOD; POWER, POLITICS, AND PATHOLOGY" Catalog to the exhibition at the Schirn Kunsthalle and Museum of Applied Arts, Frankfurt. Prestel, Illustrated, hardcover & soft. |
| 2001 | FAZ, Oct. 22. Ralf Christofori: "Show me your Genetic Formula and I’ll Tell You Who You Are: Kevin Clarke’s Photographs Cross Abstraction and Appearance". Review. |
| 2001 | WIRED, September, 2000. "The Essential James Watson". Illustrated. |
| 2001 | SCIENCE NEWS December, 2000 "Genetic Artistry". Illustrated. |
| 2000 | KUNSTFORUM "Kevin Clarke, Der Unsichtbare Koerper" 149 Review by Martin Pesch.Ill |
| 2000 | PHOTOGRAPHY NOW "Kevin Clarke’s Innen-schau Portrait im Museum Wiesbaden. text Michael Scheuermann . Illustrated. |
| 1999 | "THE END OF THE ART WORLD". critical writings by Robert C. Morgan. Allworth Press. New York, NY. 226 pp. Chapter 3 Kevin Clarke, Signs of Loss and Intimacy. Illustrated. |
| 1999 | "THE INVISIBLE BODY" Kevin Clarke, Dr. Volker Rattemeyer Museum Wiesbaden 118pp. Illustrated. |
| 1999 | ART KALEIDOSCOPE Frankfurt, October, 1999 "Experimental Portraits by Kevin Clarke. Illustrated. |
| 1999 | FRANKFURT ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG "Die Menschen Mit Metaphern Beschreiben" Katharina Deschka October 23. Illustrated. |
| 1998 | "GENE WORLDS- PROMETHEUS’ LABORATORY?" Catalog, BundesKunsthalle Bonn. Illustrated |
| 1998 | TEXAS MONTHLY "Our 100 Best photographs. Feb. issue. Photo number six. Illustrated. |
| 1997 | VERNAL PASSAGE catalog exhibition at Grand Salon, New York. Illustrated. |
| 1997 | REVIEW review by Robert C. Morgan, "Vernal Passage". Dec 15. issue. |
| 1997 | IMPAKT 1997, Utrecht, Netherlands. Catalog. |
| 1997 | "Time", Being-Memory. Seven Artists on Deleuze. Illustrated. |
| 1996 | ART JOURNAL "Contemporary Art and the Genetic Code". Text, "From the Blood of Poets" by Kevin Clarke. Spring 1996. Illustrated. |
| 1996 | INTELLIGENT AGENT Review of Kevin Clarke website From "The Blood of Poets", by Richard Ledes. Appeared on-line and in print form. Illustrated. Volume 1, No. 3, 1996 |
| 1995 | SYNAESTHETIC 2 The Intersection of Science & Art. Alex Cigale. 4 color illustrations and text "From The Blood Of Poets, Taken Literally". |
| 1994 | 99 TURN OF THE CENTURY MAGAZINE Volume 1, Number 2, Fall 1994 New York. |
| 1994 | "The Blood of the Poets, Taken Literally" text by Kevin Clarke, edited by Richard Milazzo. |
| 1993 | TEMA CELESTE Spring 1993. "Kevin Clarke" by Alan Jones. Illustrated. |
| 1989 | CLINICAL CHEMISTRY "Automated DNA Sequencing Methods Involving Polymerase Chain Reaction". Koepf, Hunkapillar, Venter, et al. Vol. 35, No 11, 1989. Blood supplied by Kevin Clarke. Illustrated. |
| 1985 | EUROPEAN PHOTOGRAPHY 84. Abrams. Edited by Edward Booth-Clibborn, London. |
| 1985 | Kevin Clarke/Horst Wackerbarth, "The Red Couch". Illustrated. |
| 1985 | "THE RED COUCH, A PORTRAIT OF AMERICA", 1984 , Alfred van der Marck Editions/ Harper & Row. Photographs of Americans on a red velvet couch. Text by William Least Heat Moon. Softcover edition. |
| 1984 | "THE RED COUCH, A PORTRAIT OF AMERICA", 1984 , Alfred van der Marck Editions/Harper & Row. Photographs of Americans on a red velvet couch. Text by William Least Heat Moon. Hardcover. Numerous reviews, television appearances, magazine articals, etc. world wide accompanied publication. |
| 1984 | STERN magazine, Germany. The Red Couch. 20pp color illustrations. May 11,1983. Two Gold Medals were awarded by the Art Director’s Club of Germany for this article, including Best Photography and Best Editorial in a magazine. It was the first double gold of the ADC’s 80 year history. |
| 1985 | LIFE "Red Rover" The Red Couch, November, 1982. . Illustrated. |
| 1980 | KAUFHAUSWELT (Department Store World), 1980 Schirmer + Mosel Verlag, Munich. Black & white photographs by Kevin Clarke in Kaufhaus Des Westens (KaDeWe) in West Berlin. Text by Hans J. Scheurer. . Illustrated. |
| 1980 | "KAUFHAUSWELT (Department Store World), 1980 Frankfurter Kunstverein. Black & white photographs by Kevin Clarke in Kaufhaus Des Westens (KaDeWe) in West Berlin. Text sby Dr. Peter Weiermair and Kevin Clarke. Catalog. Illustrated. |
| 1980 | "POOL", Artist’s Space, New York. Edited by Russell Maltz. Begin of Red Couch project. catalog. Illustrated. |
| 1977 | "KUNST UND MEDIEN, MATERIALIEN ZUR DOCUMENTA 6", Stadtzeitung und Verlag, Kassel. Documenta 6 anti-catalog and prize-winning best seller. 300pp. Illustrated |
Selected Public & Private Collections
- Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History, Permanent Archive, Washington, DC
- Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York
- International Center of Photography, New York
- The Wellcome Trust, London
- Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas
- Tampa Museum of Art, Florida
- San Antonio Museum of Art, Texas
- Museum Wiesbaden, Germany
- Cold Spring Harbor Lab, New York
- Vitra Museum, Weil am Rhein, Germany
- Pitney Bowes Collection, New York
- Georg von Holtzbrinck Verlag, Stuttgart, Germany
- Coca Cola Collection, Atlanta, Georgia
- B-W Bank, Stuttgart, Germany
- DZ Bank, Frankfurt, Germany
- Howard and Janet Stein, JGS Foundation, New York and Santa Barbara
- A & B Moeckel, Frankfurt, Germany
- William N. Copley Estate Connecticut
- Estate of John Cage, New York
- Lothar Schirmer, Munich
- Hartmut and Heike Schwesinger, Bad Homburg, Germany
- Gegia Adinolfi, Rome
- Ann & Jim Harithas, New York, Houston
- Ute & Michael Berger, Wiesbaden
- Lahl Collection, Wiesbaden
- Martin Kunz, Switzerland
- James D. Watson, Cold Spring Harbor, New York
- James Bernstein, Maryland
Art is about names: knowing the right ones, making one for yourself. The naming of a child constitutes the common man’s sole poetic publication in the course of a lifetime. The name Iovanna on a church wall is all that remains of a life ended long ago, an unbreakable code. Today a humble name accumulates endless identification numbers, on passports and credit cards, accompanied by a recent photograph or even fingerprints; in the near future, "automated DNA Sequencing Methods Involving Polymerase Chain Reaction" will provide a more reliable way of confirming identity than knowledge of one’s mother’s maiden name. The "invisible made visible through an apparently simple genetic alphabet" in the words of the artist Kevin Clarke.
Portraiture is central to Clarke’s enterprise, intuitive meditations on identity and essence, body and soul, the self and the name. After having studied sculpture under Hans Haacke and Christopher Wilmarth at The Cooper Union, in New York, Clarke began a long and intense sojourn in Switzerland and Germany in 1976, and began his exploration of the innately sculptural attributes of photography which continue to this day. Clarke participated with Joseph Beuys in the Freie Universitaet during the sixth documenta, and Beuys was to sponsor Clarke’s inclusion in the International Artist’s Gremium. Beuys’ concrete approach to the apparatus of photography has left it’s mark on the younger artist’s own outlook.
Clarke’s book Kaufhauswelt , published by Schirmer & Mosel in 1980, can be said to be the first fruit of this influence: a classic of it’s kind and winner of the Kodak Book Award, it represents a sociological description of a large Berlin department store in the form of a series of black and white photo portraits of it’s employees. The Red Couch, A Portrait of America, followed in 1984. This book consists of one hundred color photographs of a cross-section of American citizenry, each subject seated on the same tattered red couch which the artist lugged across the continent to provide a metaphorical unifying thread of Buster Keatonesque surrealism throughout the volume.
Today, Clarke is midway through an ambitious undertaking which consists of using the state of the science DNA sequence as a medium for portraiture. "My recent works investigate questions of Identity and the Portrait," the artist has written. "One of the more obvious questions motivating these works is: What are identifying elements and when do characteristics coalesce into a unit which signifies "Portrait"? My activities in portrait photography suggest to me that other disciplines than photography as practiced have advanced investigations into identity and it is with this in mind that I have begun a number of collaborations with genetic research scientists resulting in genetic models embodying the notion of Portrait."
It would be a mistake to conclude that Clarke has fallen on his knees before the Golden Calf of science, although his attitude toward it is still far more earnest than Duchamp’s gentle mockery. Clarke still retains an essentially surrealist outlook, laced with a major dose of "Awe," which is also the title of a world-ranging photo project tracing Halley’s Comet over all continents. A tree in one work is repeatedly referred to as "Magritte’s tree" by the artist, and the actual spreading chestnut in question has it’s roots deep in the soil of William Copley’s Connecticut estate-fertile ground for surrealism; a low-lying suburban house in another work was chosen by personal, intuitive motives, and may bring to mind both the content and working process of second-generation surrealist and first-generation Pop artist Richard Hamilton.
At all times the presence of the genetic code remains, in these works, a reminder of the mysterious, the ungraspable, always out-of-reach goal of the search for knowledge of cosmos, and of self. The DNA becomes an invisible cathedral, an architecture whose purpose is to lead to the contemplation of the divine. "The scientific novelty may be fascinating, the social implications of genetic engineering may fill some with dread, but as an artist what interests me and moves me is the confluence of notions of individuality, language, physicality, and the development of a codex to describe a most elusive reality."
Coming as it does in the wake of long voyages and investigations, the recent work of Kevin Clarke has now set it’s course on a voyage inward, following the charts which both the mystic and the scientist have set down. These works constitute a "conceptual art" in the truest sense of the term.