KÉVIN BRAY
Kévin Bray (Corbie, FR 1989) is a French interdisciplinary artist currently based in Amsterdam. Initially trained as a graphic designer with two MA degrees obtained in both France and the Netherlands, Bray soon after became an artist in residence at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam (2018-2019).
There he cultivated his practice as an independent visual artist within the contemporary art arena. Moving with ease across the boundaries of various disciplines, through his work he tries to understand how the form and language of particular software and various mediums are visualized and how they can be potentially manipulated into other ways of functioning.
His vivid images are the product of a methodology defined by a hybridity of techniques, motifs and visual codes in which he plays, stretches and confronts various new technologies and tools to shape a stimulating artistic language. Influenced by his graphic design background and fascinated by the history of painting, ideas of composition and communication are ever present in the construction of his work. By engaging with a diversity of communication strategies ranging from video, painting, animation, to sculpture, music and writing, Bray observes and learns their many functions. His desire to blend these ways of creation allow him to bridge techniques across the physical and digital realms in unexpected ways, creating new captivating realities and perspectives that reflect the evolution that our stories are taking.
“ In my work I try to be a generalist of technologies, tools, and media. I believe that they are a language or at least an extension of it. I try to observe and learn from as many tools deriving from a diversity of systems, ranging from paintings, sculpting, writing, 3D modeling, filming, animating, composing, drawing methodologies and design to storytelling music making and sound design. Of course, I don’t master any of them but I try to understand and bridge all of those forms of language in unexpected ways, in order to encompass new realities and new perspectives on the shapes our narratives (social and political beliefs) are taking. What is important is the story to tell as much as the way to tell it. Surface and content, the surface is content. Medium and formats, information and mediation ”.
We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us –
Marshall McLuhanHiding behind it (2020)
Digital print and acrylic on canvas
80 x 52 cm
Kévin Bray
it is left (2023) + it was right (2023)
steel pole, wooden board, carpet, 3D printed PLA, acrylic paint
Individual sculpture: 108 x 160 cm
Installation price (including projections): €24,000
Installation price (projections excluded): €19,000
Singular sculpture (including projections): €12,000
Singular sculpture (projections excluded): €9,500
THE COLLECTIVE SHADOW
The solo exhibition The Collective Shadow showcased sculptures, paintings and video projections, all of which were composed to interact mutually and which formed the intricate fabric of a multi-media installation. This interrelation of mediums, narrative techniques and tools is important in depicting and directing the experience of the works themselves and reflects essential strategies of Bray’s artistic practice.
In The Collective Shadow, Bray’s works and installations guide us through an exploration of a universal entity and a historic figure: the Monster. The concept of the Monster has been introduced to all of us, one way or another. Yet, only by looking at the etymology of the word monstrosity do we begin to understand the potentially complex roles that monsters play within society. Monster derives from the Latin, monstrare, meaning “to demonstrate”, and monere, “to warn.” Thus, in essence, monsters are demonstrative. They reveal, show and make evident —often uncomfortably— the cultural or psychological characteristics that we as a society find difficult to acknowledge.
Bray’s work is distinguished through multimedia approaches, particularly the technique of projection/video mapping. In which a projector is used to cast light on arbitrarily structured surfaces in a tailored way, seamlessly layering the projection like a new skin to interact mutually on top of our physical reality. Reverberating this methodology and play between obscurity and projection, with The Collective Shadow Bray expands on this interrelation of light and darkness as a metaphor to consider our larger collective challenges.
Throughout the past decade we have had a resurgence of monsters. They seem to act as an important social tool, able to embody abstract contemporary and often collective fears, dangers and anxieties. These monsters in some cases exemplify Carl Jung’s collective shadow. In Jung’s analytical psychology, the
collective shadow is defined as what has been hidden inside of ourselves collectively because it is repressed, denied or unintegrated. Within his practice, Bray adopts the climate crisis and fossil fuel energy consumption as examples of this expanding shadow. The complexity of relations and our dependency to production processes with high polluting emissions explain our in-action towards climate changes. Such a massive problem eludes us in our shortsightedness and doesn’t seem to fit our political and social agenda, which is drastically shaped by a global neoliberal way of seeing the world.
In the first room of The Collective Shadow, blinded by the symbolic spotlights of our spectacledriven society, two characters converse unintelligibly. In the background, their shadows hectically grow and experiment within the limits of their elemental powers and tools. The evergrowing complexity of this world’s dynamics provokes unbounded natural reactions that are ever more primitive and elemental. And through these catastrophic acts, we come to see that our contemporary monsters are the ones we have already been introduced to during childhood— Water, Fire, Wind and Earth— the elements that create life, are today’s increasing dangers.
Solo exhibition The Collective Shadow at Upstream Gallery, 2023 it is left (2023) + it was right (2023): steel pole, wooden board, carpet, 3D printed PLA, acrylic paint Solo exhibition The Collective Shadow at Upstream Gallery, 2023 From left to right: Aqua (2022), Vento (2022), Morpher (video, 2018-ongoing), Fueco (2022), Terra (2022)MORPHER
A large part of Bray’s practice revolves around the creation of paintings and the continual evolution of his video Morpher (2018 – ongoing). Navigating through bright shape shifting landscapes, this video work acts as the spineand living archive of Bray’s artistic practice. Like a living organism, Morpher it is continuously evolving, and the many characters seen across his paintings become props in an extending reality where they can be activated differently. Interacting with the backdrop and stage, his otherworldly images are always at the edge of transparency and concealment. He is renowned for showing the viewer precisely how the work is constructed, and what is essential to him is the story to tell as much as the way to tell it. By doing so, he invites us to reflect on the transformation of production processes and the alteration of their narratives, revealing their ability to force us to question our relation to materiality and reality.
Like a living organism, Morpher is continuously evolving, and the many characters seen across his paintings become props in an extending reality where they can be activated differently. The paintings on the aforementioned opposite wall, are autonomous pieces as much as symbolic storyboards for the video Morpher . The paintings recurrently make an appearance within the video series, existing within the pre-production space as announcers of what may come, as much as props later within the video as reminders of these interconnected complementary processes.
Morpher (2018-ongoing) Video: 11m04scds
Still from Morpher (2018-ongoing)
NN AWARD INSTALLATION
3D modeling image references are a set of images that help artists to have a deeper understanding of the object they are modeling in a 3D software. These images are often the front back, right, left, up and down representation of the object they are digitalizing. For this NN award installation, a painting has been captured in these 6 different angles as a way to display, comment and bring together the making of the object and the object itself. It is a simple gesture of distanciation towards a still image built primarily in volume, but also a strategy to hide and reveal parts of the narrative which is usually left in the shadows.
Group show Mixed Feelings at Upstream Gallery from July–August
2023. From left to right: Gazing Bitflips by Noor Nuyten, and two works by Kévin Bray: It is commodifying the depth for the growth of others (2023) and Less they touch the ground and more they decide for it (2023), digital prints on canvasIt is leaking (2020) Digital print and acrylic on canvas 120 x 90 cm