A new art exhibit opens this Saturday, June 8 from 5-8:30 pm at the Keene Arts gallery. The exhibit is called “Twists & Turns” and features the work of two Adirondack artists—sculptor Matt Horner and abstract painter Mike Kaz. Ahead of Saturday’s opening, Kaz spoke about the inspiration behind the exhibit and how he hopes people interact with his and Horner’s art.
MIKE KAZ: So we’re in my studio in Keene Valley. I’m a painter. I guess I would say an abstract painter, that’s probably the easiest way to describe it. I was involved in the art world for a long time and then backed away from it and when I re-engaged, I’ve refined, worked, developed, and processed paintings for the last 12-13 years. So yeah, we’re sitting in a big pile of all the work right now.
EMILY RUSSELL: You’re doing this show with Adirondack sculptor, Matt Horner, called “Twists and Turns.” So tell me about the idea of the show.
KAZ: Yeah, so two independent ideas came together, which spawned the idea of the title. For myself, I’m doing a visual representation- 16 pieces that are all 48 inches by 40 inches- while dissimilar in some ways, there’s a similar thread that runs through them all and there’s a this silver line that runs through all the pieces. It stems from a quote from an alpinist from Jackson Hole Wyoming Mark Newcomb that talks about climbing, skiing, living, and having a family- all these things create these points and when you connect all those points it’s aligned and he says that line is your life. And so I think a good way to think about these 16 pieces is if you had a rolling film and stopped the film. It’s the stills, the snapshots of that of that rolling film.
The connectivity with Matt [Horner]’s work is that he does stone and steel sculptures and the way he polishes the steel leaves these dark pitted marks in the steel. I’ve always loved it and I’ve always seen these pieces in his studio and so a few months ago, we were like, okay, how do we collaborate and pull this together? And he walks over to these pieces and he’s like, ‘I want to show these,’ and I was like, ‘Well that’s a funny story because that’s how I pictured the line running through the painting,’ so it was just a bit happenstance, but the overall the concept is that each piece is sort of a snapshot of a long continuous line of really anyone’s life.
RUSSELL: So we’re standing here in front of your art and I’ve been watching you put your hand on it and lean against the art and there are obvious tears and texture to this art. It has a kind of imperfect or non-precious feel to it. What are you trying to kind of get across with this style of art?
KAZ: Yeah for me the process of creating art is for me. The finished product, and this maybe sounds a little too artsy, but if you took these out and threw them in the road and a truck ran over them, I wouldn’t care because my journey is done with these. The idea now is to deliver them in a way so that someone else can go on their own journey with them. So the materials I use are super durable. I don’t think that certain types of art should be mega-delicate. One of my favorite painters- a German painter Anselm Kiefer- does these massive and I mean truly big works and there was a gallerist that he worked with who went to his studio to look at the work and he brought them out on wheelie carts. They’re so big he works in an airplane hangar. And it was raining out and the gallery is like panicking, like ‘Oh no, let’s not [bring them outside] it’s raining.’ He’s like, ‘Oh it’s fine. They’ll be fine.’ He’s like, ‘It’ll make them better.’
I love that casual [attitude], like ‘Oh, yeah, I made these but I’ve never been so connected to them that I can’t step back for them.’ It doesn’t mean that there aren’t elements about them that are maybe a little more delicate, but part of it’s just the raw materials I used to and then a process I’ve been doing more. So the last few years I’ve been removing paint, so going back in after a lot of materials built up. Even like the one behind you there, you can see that the image was created by removing the paint. So just a different way to get to a visual goal that I always have. I like a lot of density in images and I try to think of the work as a little bit more like a jazz album than a pop album, like you’ve got to sit down with it and let it wash over you a little bit. With this show, I’m going to have a playlist that goes with it, so that people can put earbuds in and each piece has a song that goes with it so they can sit with the piece with that song and kind of have a little different sound and visual experience.
A question I get asked a lot with abstract art is like, ‘What am I supposed to be looking at?’ And another artist, Jackson Pollock, had a great quote that when you walk past a bed of flowers, you don’t tear your hair out about what it means. It either looks like something you’re interested in or not. But giving it that space and time to really just look at it- I think that’s really what abstract art asks of the viewer, like take a minute, look at it and let your eyes wander through it. Get up close to it back away from it. It’s not intentional. A lot of times it’s not representative of anything, but I think that’s baked into a lot of people’s art eyes is that there has to be some connection to that.
RUSSELL: I wonder if you and Matt have talked about what you hope people will take away from your show. What is that?
KAZ: For me, a viewing experience of any art is simple. Another analogy might be like going and having a really good meal. You sit down, you have this experience, you walk away and you either loved it, it was okay, or it wasn’t great. And It’s no different in art. When someone looks at a piece and they’re like, I don’t get it, I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking at,’ if I’m there I can kind of help and guide it a little bit, but I think art, as a big word, tends to keep a lot of its viewers at arm’s length a little bit and I’ve never been a huge fan of that.
I know Matt isn’t either I think he likes things to be attainable. That doesn’t mean that they need to be simple. I think things can still be dense and tell a story, but they don’t have to be complicated. So yeah, having an experience and being active with it. I think that’s what’s great about three-dimensional work like Matt’s, too, is that every view is different. It depends on how it’s displayed. It it’s displayed low, you can look over it or get down. When you watch somebody at a museum, I think you can tell the people who are creative because they tend to get a little more active with their viewing. They like to get up close and then they get yelled up by somebody and they back away and just being a little more of an active viewer than just standing eight feet away and viewing it which is one step of that. I think the takeaway for people would just be that they not walk away with any kind of revelation or some huge thing in their mind, just that they had an experience. And I think that the music thing has always been an interesting aspect for me because I listen to music when I work. I know Matt does too. The idea of art being an experience, it’s not just a representation of something- I would hope that’s what people would take both from Matt’s and my work.
