Already known for planting her cut-out shapes onto a dense matte black ground, which she has characterized as ‘non-space,’ for this show, Kent challenges viewers straight off with a plunge into a black field already seemingly torn away to reveal both apparent voids alongside ‘cut-out’ figures in white that echo the more prominently placed pigmented shapes, and—further confusing her ‘non-space’—shallow, quasi-illusionistic depths in which undulant and organic segmented forms in gauzy charcoal-grays seemed to emerge from behind the deep-black torn-out surround like protozoa or plant stalks, only to sink again behind interior black shards and stalactites.
Read MoreFor her first solo show at Kohn Gallery, Chicago-based artist Caroline Kent hung eight of her oversize acrylic paintings around the venue’s main and commensurately scaled space. The thin unstretched canvases, anchored to the wall by their top edges, suggested an affinity with banners or tapestries, pliant and portable heralds even though their compositions were long since fixed.
Read MoreAt Kohn Gallery in Hollywood, Caroline Kent’s abstract shapes dance above matte black backgrounds. In each painting, made at a large and consistent scale, geometric forms mingle and position across the canvas. Like the cut paper works of Matisse — Kent also begins her process with cut paper to sketch out her forms — Kent’s shapes have precise and clean edges, while smaller details, like a swarm of squiggles, float on the black ground to create subtle annotations, almost like punctuation.
Read MoreEven as a child, Caroline Kent was immersed in the language of abstraction. The Chicago-based artist — whose large-scale black canvases evoke cosmic unknowns — grew up alongside her identical twin sister, Christine Leventhal, with whom she shared special methods of communication. Their conversations can still be so elliptical and condensed that they perplex others.
Read MoreART: Caroline Kent: A Sudden Appearance of the Sun and Sophia Narrett: Soul Kiss at Kohn Gallery. Interested in a reevaluation of abstract painting, Kent’s practice is founded on notions of language and textual translation.
Read MoreAs the world continues to watch numbers in hopes they come down or stay the same, two Chicago artists got to see their bank accounts go up in the amount of $10,000 thanks to winning the 2020 Chicago Artadia Awards. Sculptor/printmaker Eliza Myrie and abstract painter Caroline Kent received the unrestricted funds this week as part of the national nonprofit’s 11th award cycle. The national nonprofit gives money annually to visual artists (in any medium) living within Cook County for more than two years.
Read MoreCaroline Kent breaches borders, formally, conceptually, geographically. Interested in reevaluation of abstract painting, that sacred ivory tower of modernism, Kent’s practice is founded on notions of textual translation informed, in part, by time spent in Romania.
Read MoreKohn Gallery in Los Angeles has added Chicago-based painter Caroline Kent to its roster. The gallery will present Kent’s first solo exhibition in L.A. in September. Works by the artist, who is known for her explorations of language and abstraction that unfold on black canvases, can be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. She has previously exhibited at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles, the FLAG Art Foundation in New York, and elsewhere.
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