KEVIN FINKLEA
Finklea’s paintings focus only on color. By removing extraneous and unnecessary details, these works feature solid hues on canvas. Their scale and attention to composition serve to accentuate the already energized relationships between the colors he pairs. Finklea has a penchant for never making perfectly divided, equal spaces for color in his work. Sections are never exactly halved or quartered, and color, at times, equally indeterminate, is used to re-balance the unequal imbalanced sections. His paintings are made in response to two factors. After a relatively condensed period of painting objects, he wanted to make broader expanses of color that exploited the pigments he studies. Many of the colors used in these works are quite rare and in some cases no longer produced. Secondly, he wanted these paintings to manifest a process of renewal and revision in the making of the color. By unburdening himself of the expectation that the past brings, Finklea creates a momentum, driven and focused, that moves in a very considered direction.
Finklea’s wooden objects are created to persevere the fleeting human impulse and convictions and ignore all sense of memory and time. By using excess materials from previous works and found wood pieces, Finklea makes things that are verifiable and tactile, ignoring narratives and histories both past and present. Finklea’s objects are characterized by saturated hues and distinct contours which are only fully appreciated when viewed from multiple angles. The use of intense colors using acrylic (and iridescent pigment in some of the work) accompanies the deliberately irregular-shaped wooden forms. Each piece is created with exceptional use of materials and attention to detail. Where the objects are not painted, the exposed wood grain highlights the weight and solidity of the form.
Kevin Finklea (b. 1958, Philadelphia, PA) received his BA from Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, PA. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at such museums and institutions as: Museum St. Wendel, Germany; Shirley Fiterman Art Center, New York, NY; Boecker Contemporary, Heidelberg, Germany; Saarländishes Künstlerhaus, Saarbrücken, Germany; KNO Lab. Space, Kyiv, Ukraine; Ely House of Contemporary Art, North Haven, CT; Faux Mouvement Center d'Art Contemporain, Metz, France; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Kunstraum Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany; Neue Kunstmuseum Aschaffenburg, Aschaffenburg, Germany; Kunstmuseum Ahlen, Ahlen, Germany; Visual Arts Center of NJ, Summit, NJ; Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA; 37PK Platform for the Arts, Haarlem, Holland; 2nd Biennial of Non-Objective Art, Pont de Claix, France; Paris Concret, Paris, France; Künstlerhaus Dosenfabrik, Hamburg, Germany; among others. His works are found in private and in selected public collections: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Bridgepoint Capital Limited, London, England; Wilmington Trust Fund, New York.
Past Exhibitions
