SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- Dolby Chadwick Gallery is presenting Crystalline Velocity, an exhibition of recent paintings by James Kennedy.

Think about it: we are already a quarter of the way through the 21st century, meaning that we have witnessed many astounding and sometimes frightening changes to the fabric of our social world. With the emergence and impending proliferation of Artificial Intelligence, it is a safe bet that the next twenty-five years will further exaggerate the velocity of social change, even if it leads to a yet-to-be imagined spiral into oblivion. In other words, the punch-and-slap that the Italian Futurists celebrated over a century ago have since become unassailable facts of 21st century life. Stable certitudes have been displaced by the spiraling proliferation of information networks that defy description. Artistic responses to these circumstances vary. On one hand, many artists create slap-happy productions that use absurd exaggeration to highlight the effects of technology-driven social velocity. The other hand points to understated works that offer refreshing respite from the information overload of everyday life. Rarely do we see works of art accomplishing both missions at the same time. So, hear me when I say that James Kennedy’s paintings do exactly that in ways that are dramatic and subtle.

Kennedy’s recent paintings always pack a disarming punch of unpredictability. All make unusual and elaborate mischief with the same perpendicular grid that was Piet Mondrian’s great subject eight and nine decades ago, reminding us that those earlier grids started out as images of leafless trees set against radiant skies. Over time, Mondrian refined that idea by excluding everything extraneous to what deemed to the essence of painting, that being strictly proportioned configurations of white, black, red, yellow and blue that fused schematic and graphic picture spaces into crystalline models of consciousness. Kennedy’s paintings do something similar by doing the opposite: they unwind Mondrian’s reductive process using a kind of reverse-exclusion strategy where shapes and configurations proliferate in odd and unpredictable directions. In so doing, the translate the idea of a non-specific network into very specific objects, literally objectifying that which denies singular objectification. This process starts by torquing and splintering parts of those grids, like pulling the threads of a piece of frayed fabric. Other parts build out like capillaries branching and multiplying at oblique angles without regard to a centralized distribution system. In their complexity, they can also be likened to the fractures and facets of crystal formations, or proliferating coral formations or high-altitude images of layered archeological sites. Their multi-layered configurations proliferate in all directions in the manner of a rhizomorphic network rather than vertically like the roots, trunks and branches of trees. If Mondrian’s works remind us that less is more, then Kennedy’s paintings counter by saying that more is more.

Rhizomorphism is a term that has come to the forefront in the discussion of contemporary painting during the past three decades. It reflects an observation of natural phenomena, that of fungus, particularly the type of underground fungus that covers a large area without emanating from a specific center. If Mondrian’s work redirects to a time when the piston engine was the model for advanced technology (because it emulated the way that a heart beats), then Kennedy’s paintings draw the connection of the central nervous system to electronic microcircuits. In this way they conjure the work of another artist of Mondrian’s generation, the English painter Ben Nicholson. In fact, Kennedy has these two quotes from Nicholson displayed on his studio wall:

"The kind of painting which I find exciting is not necessarily representational or non-representational, but it is musical and architectural. Whether this visual relationship is slightly more or slightly less abstract is, for me, beside the point."

"Painting and religious experience are the same thing. It is a question of the perpetual motion of a right idea."

In other words, Kennedy’s interlacing configurations infer a slow-motion collision between internal and external forces. To moderate the energized complexity of his compositions, Kennedy uses muted colors, often relying on subdued shades of blue and red ocher that might hark back to the sky and earth of Mondrian’s early landscapes. With the right kind of eyes, we can also see these colors as allusions to the evanescent still-lives of Giorgio Morandi, only here, they invoke perfervid enervation rather than ghostly quietude.

All of this is accomplished with acrylic paint and masking tape. The paint is mixed with mediums that run from matte to satin, with maybe a small bit of gloss to add some sparkle to their surfaces. There is variety in the thickness of the paint. At a few select junctures, we can see it diluted like watercolor or gouache, but more often it sports the consistency of pancake batter. It is worth noting that Kennedy uses deactivated credit cards as his preferred paint application tools, allowing him to literally swipe the paint into place without revealing any indication of a brush. No doubt, conventional palate knives are too unstable for Kennedy’s process, just as putty knives are too ungainly. This explains one of the many perplexing things about Kennedy’s paintings is the way that the paint seems to have found its way into position by its own inscrutable accord, rather than by any purpose outside of itself.

-Mark Van Proyen

Born in Northern Ireland, James Kennedy studied at the Royal Scottish Academy in Glasgow, where he was also active in the worlds of dance and theater. Now based in New York, he exhibits widely both in North America and internationally and is represented in museum collections, including the British Museum, and in private collections such as that of the late Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Edward Albee. This will be his fourth solo exhibition at Dolby Chadwick Gallery.