Andrew Kozlowski

Artist Statement

I am curious about how our histories are shaped by objects we possess, share, discard, collect, and hold dear.  These objects provide a fascinating reminder that history has always been constructed from what has survived, through careful planning, accidental circumstance, or willful evolution. The cast of characters, ranging from beer cans and building debris, to ancient urns and human remains, help me tell stories that span the intimate moments of individuals to the grand disasters shared by everyone. The items depicted are stand-ins for daily activities, relics from travels, debris found underfoot, and representations of news stories which briefly populated my social media news feeds.  They are reminders the past is equal parts remembered and forgotten, and that monuments and museums are perhaps better viewed as representations of their makers than as static moments of history.

In this exhibition I have elected to present two bodies of work.  “Future Blueprints” is a series of relief monoprints made from small laser cut blocks which can be rearranged infinitely. These pieces utilize a cast of characters that have populated my work for several years, a mix of high and low culture, from trophies to soda cups, plants to broken boards, road cones to priceless vases. As individuals they contain some sense of time and human history, and as a group they become a set of impossible blueprints designed by some future architect looking to rebuild a culture lost to time. These pieces, as much as they reflect a careless attitude about the landscape, focus on a narrative of how our objects define our culture and our time. The shaky architecture creates a fleeting stability in each piece, embedding it with a sense of humor that is ideally equal parts anxiety, dread, loss, and hope.

The second body of work is recent, made during the Spring and Summer of 2020.   With these pieces I wanted to use the structure of a comic book page, and the convention of panels as a way of dividing time, to see how a limited number of images could be rearranged to create different relationships.  The works were created with a sense of improv, each limited printing day spent in the studio making impulsive choices of color and layout, reckoning with how the format provided connection between elements.  Additionally, this series has resulted in other mutations, small layered monoprints created from test sheets, and book forms that further explore the relationship between these images.  Narrative, whether overt, or subtle, remains a key part of my work, and these newer linocuts are the result of continuing to play with how the structure of a page and the relationship of images encourage the viewer to consider how each print is read and ultimately how they form each story.

About the Artist

Andrew Kozlowski earned his MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University and his BFA in Printmaking from the Tyler School of Art, Temple University.  His prints, works on paper, installations, and sculptural work works have been featured in more than a dozen solo exhibitions, and over 50 group exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad.  In 2009 he completed a residency at the Frans Masereel Center in Belgium and was awarded 2011-2012 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship for his work in printmaking.  He is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of North Florida.  

Links:
Exhibition Preview
Artist Statement/Bio: Stephen Heywood
Joint Exhibition Statement