Kevin Barrett

Kevin Barrett Biography

Kevin Barrett’s formal impulse carries a Neo-Modernist orientation to sculpture. It is an impulse that not only projects a deeply felt expressive content, but also carries a carefully hewn visual language. His shapes are complexly configured in three-dimensional space through the formal application of alternating thrusts and conterthrusts that function as a means toward rhythmic unity.

Barrett’s constructive approach has continued to refine itself over the past decade. His work has become less angular and more intensely biomorphic. His ingenious overlapping of amebic planes, as seen in the current work, functions like a mind-game that carries both sensuality and wit. There is a certain lightness about these planar shapes that evades the weight of turgid stylization.

While obliquely reminiscent of Hans Arp’s Dada cut-outs made in Zurich during World War I, Barrett’s forms retain a sense of dynamic energy and metaphorical power that exceeds the past. His highly-charged visual inquiries into the morphological interrelations of shape, ranging from biology to astronomy, offer an incisive vision that suggests phenomena not unrelated to present-day scientific reality.

Barrett’s remarkable capacity to employ diversity within unity, and vice versa, has always been one of the artist’s strengths. This quality is further evident in these painted aluminum wall reliefs. Barrett’s forms reveal an insight into how nature can be transfigured through a deeply-felt aesthetic insight. At the same time, there is a toughness about these shapes that is openly deterministic in the sense of the early Constructivists.

Looking at Barrett’s work one may find a new sense of equilibrium in a world that seems out of sync and chaotic, a world where the tactile and the virtual seems at odds with one another. In these remarkable colorful aluminum constellations, Kevin Barrett offers another possibility for the future. Rather than cynical exhaustion, these interrelated shapes are woven together not as absolute forms but as decoys that keep slipping in and out of place before our eyes. Yet ultimately they cohere together. They retain an openness that brings art into an exquisite dialogue with science. They are free-forms gliding through space and time, full of resonance and equanimity.

Biography

New York artist Kevin Barrett has been surrounded by abstract sculpture and painting his entire life.

His welded aluminum sculptures and wall reliefs reflect a successful blending of these two disciplines.

Born in Ann Arbor Michigan in 1962. Coming from a family of artists Kevin was exposed to both painting and sculpture at an early age. He first took an interest in art while watching his grandfather, Stan Barrett a painter, work in his studio. Kevin attributes this early influence to his modern-day use of color to enhance the three dimensional forms in his own work. He attended School of Visual Arts in Manhattan and the Maryland Institute of Art in Baltimore.

After college, Barrett created sculptures for Shidoni, a bronze casting and fabricating foundry and outdoor sculpture park in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He also apprenticed to a number of well known artists in New York and Europe and built sculptures for such well known artists as Herbert Ferber, Tom Wesselmann, and Alan Houser.

Barrett set up his first studio in Miami, where he worked for ten years before returning to New York City, where he has maintained a studio for over twenty years. He currently resides with his wife, Sabina, and their three daughters in Duxbury, Massachusetts.

Barrett brings a deeply felt expressive content, energy, and rhythmic unity to the inherent strength and durability of his chosen medium. His success is well documented; his sculptures and wall reliefs have been shown and can be found throughout the United States, South America and in Europe both in public and private collections.

Solo Exhibitions:

2011  Outdoor Sculpture, C Fine Art, Shelter Island, NY

2006  New Sculptures and Wall Reliefs, Artefact Gallery, NY, NY

2004  New Sculptures, DeGraaf Forsythe Galleries, Saugatuck, MI

2001  Front Street Series, Robert Pardo Gallery, New York, NY

1997  Wall Sculptures, Ezair Gallery, New York, NY

1995  Sculptural Wall Illusions, Dietrich Contemporary Arts, NY, NY

1991  New Sculptures, Boehringer Gallery Inc., Hobe Sound, FL

Group Exhibitions:

2015  SOFA, Sculpture Objects Funtional Art and Design, Navy Pier, Chicago, IL

2015  Grand Opening Exhibition, Newbury Fine Arts, Boston, MA

2015  Group Show & Outdoor Installation, The White Room Gallery, Bridgehapton, NY

2015  Market Art + Design, Bridgehapton, NY

2015  Inspirations, Armstrong De Graaf International Fine Art, Saugatuck, MI

2015  Paper on Paper New York, Art Market Productions, New York, NY

2015  Color Personified, Newbury Fine Arts, Boston, MA

2014  Art Southampton, Lawrence Fine Art, Southampton, NY

2014  7th Annual Art Hamptons, C Fine Art, Bridgehampton, NY

2014  Summer Exhibition, Quidley & Company, Nantucket, MA

2014  Art Market San Francisco, San Francisco, CA

2013  Mystical Expressionism: Trilogy, Newbury Fine Arts, Boston, MA

2013  6th Annual Art Hamptons, Bridgehampton, NY

2013  artMRKT San Franciso 2013, San Francisco, CA

2013  Upon Reflection, Quidley & Company, Boston, MA

2012  Uncommon Ground III, C Fine Art, Bridge Gardens, Bridgehampton, NY

2012  Art MRKT, Bridgehampton, NY

2012  Art Hamptons, Bridgehampton, NY

2012  Art MRKT San Francisco 2012, San Francisco, CA

2012  Art Palm Beach, Palm Beach, Florida

2012  Inaugural Event, Salazar Contemporary Art Exhibits, La Jolla, CA

2011  Houston Fine Art Fair, Houston, TX

2011  Art MRKT, Bridgehampton, NY

2011  Art Hamptons, Sayre Park, Bridgehampton, NY

2011  Uncommon Ground II, C Fine Art, Bridge Gardens, Bridgehampton, NY

2011  Art Chicago,Merchandise Mart,Chicago, IL

2010  Art Hamptons, Sayre Park, Bridgehampton, NY

2010  Uncommon Ground, C Fine Art, Bridge Gardens, Bridgehampton, NY

2010  Group Show, Armstrong De Graaf Gallery, Holland, MI

2009  The Sculpture Mile, Madison, CT

2009  Group Show, De Graaf Forsythe Galleries, Inc., Saugatuck, MI

2009  Group Show, Evan Lurie Gallery, Carmel, IN

2009  Modern Marvels, Rosetta Stone Fine Art Gallery, Palm Beach, FL

2009  Outdoor Sculpture, The Commons, Rosetta Stone Fine Art Gallery, Palm Beach, FL

2008  Sculpt Miami, Art Basel, Miami, FL

2008  National Small Sculpture Invitational, Palm Desert, CA

2006  24th Annual BWAC Outdoor Sculpture Show, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Brooklyn, NY

2006  Three Sculptors, Walter Randel Gallery, New York, NY

2006  Group Show, Lurie Gallery, Miami, FL

2005  Group Show, De Graaf Fine Art, Ltd., Grand Rapids, MI

2005  Inaugural Group Show, Artefact Pardo Galleria, Zurich, Switzerland

2004  Group Show, Artefact Galleria, Milano,Italy

2003  Group Show, De Graaf Forsythe Galleries, Inc., Saugatuck, MI

2003  Group Show, De Graaf Fine Art, Ltd., West Palm Beach, FL

2002  Anti-Gravity, Robert Pardo Gallery, New York, NY

2002  Group Show, De Graaf Forsythe Galleries, Inc., Saugatuck, MI

2001  Collectors Choice, Center for the Arts, Vero Beach, FL

2001  21st Annual Outdoor Sculpture Show, Mather Hospital, Port Jefferson, NY

2000  Lagacies 2000, Alva Gallery, New London, CT

2000  Group Show, Pardo Lattuada Gallery, New York, NY

2000  20th Annual Outdoor Show, Mather Hospital, Port Jefferson, NY

1998  Group Show, Manifold Tribe, Chicago, IL

1998  Quietude Garden Gallery Show, East Brunswick, NJ

1998  A Sculpture Survey, Kouros Sculpture Center, Ridgefield, CT

1997  Reliefs and Sculptural Wall Art, West Side Bronze Contemporary Sculpture, Santa Fe, NM

1997  Summer Show, Museum Master, New York, NY

1996  A Sculpture Survey, Kouros Sculpture Center, Ridgefield, CT

1996  Quietude Garden Gallery Show, East Brunswick, NJ

1996  Inaugural Exhibition,The Museum Masters Collection, New York, NY

1996  Art Miami ’96, Miami Convention Center, FL

1995  Group Show, Rush Foundation, New York, NY

1995  Group Show, Dietrich Contemporary Arts, New York, NY

1994  Collectors Choice, Center for the Arts, Vero Beach, FL

1994  Inaugural Exhibition, Dietrich Contemporary Arts, New York, NY

1994  Group Show, Roswitha Benkert Gallery, Zurich, Switzerland

1993  Group Show, LMG Gallery, New York, NY

1993  A Sculptural Survey, Kouros Sculpture Center, Ridgefield, CT