Joel Kyack
The work of Los Angeles-based multimedia artist Joel Kyack is marked by hyperbole, manic structure and a brash sense of humor. Working in a variety of media including found objects, video, and installation, Kyack pulls unlikely and at times contradictory elements into his Dadaist aesthetic. Says Kyack of his recent work, “I moved into my present studio a year ago, one block from two large thrift stores in a primarily industrial neighborhood of Los Angeles, a thin sliver of land nestled between a river and a railroad and a highway. I began a daily ritual of wandering these stores, monitoring their inventories for objects of interest as potential inclusions in future work. Learning the rhythms of the stores’ particular stocks, I was drawn to their collections of framed images. Frequently rotating, these images range wildly, from original drawings to posters, from awards to memorabilia, from studio portraits to framed advertisements. These framed images began to find their ways onto canvases, re-contextualized within paintings that aimed at humorous, energetic, gestural efficiency and play between the painted canvas and the framed image.”
Joel Kyack’s solo projects include “Escape to Shit Mountain” at François Ghebaly, Los Angeles, “River/Stream/In-Between” at Kate Werble, New York, …
The work of Los Angeles-based multimedia artist Joel Kyack is marked by hyperbole, manic structure and a brash sense of humor. Working in a variety of media including found objects, video, and installation, Kyack pulls unlikely and at times contradictory elements into his Dadaist aesthetic. Says Kyack of his recent work, “I moved into my present studio a year ago, one block from two large thrift stores in a primarily industrial neighborhood of Los Angeles, a thin sliver of land nestled between a river and a railroad and a highway. I began a daily ritual of wandering these stores, monitoring their inventories for objects of interest as potential inclusions in future work. Learning the rhythms of the stores’ particular stocks, I was drawn to their collections of framed images. Frequently rotating, these images range wildly, from original drawings to posters, from awards to memorabilia, from studio portraits to framed advertisements. These framed images began to find their ways onto canvases, re-contextualized within paintings that aimed at humorous, energetic, gestural efficiency and play between the painted canvas and the framed image.”
Joel Kyack’s solo projects include “Escape to Shit Mountain” at François Ghebaly, Los Angeles, “River/Stream/In-Between” at Kate Werble, New York, and “Superclogger,” a public project produced with the Hammer Museum and LAXART, Los Angeles. Recent performances include Growing Pains Leave Stains for Kaleidoscope at MACRO Testaccio, Rome, and Wattis up with this guy? at the Wattis Institute, San Francisco. His works are part of numerous public and private collections, amongst others the Rubell Family Collection, Miami.