Kenneth Ober
By liz, October 1st, 2009,in | Comments Off on Kenneth Ober
BIOGRAPHY
Kenneth Houghton Ober was born in Cambridge, Mass. on February 22, 1972 to parents who were attending local colleges. Several months later, after graduating, his parents moved to rural Maryland to settle. Kenneth’s creative abilities surfaced in elementary school and had become his focus by high school. The guidance of an excellent teacher pushed him to explore diverse media and ideas as well as instilling an idea of how to encourage the imagination.
In 1990 Kenneth entered the University of Maryland at College Park with Fine Arts as his major. His diverse studies in Art History opened doors into the worlds of religion and Asian culture, which introduced Buddhist philosophy and practice. These influences steered Kenneth’s work away from traditional Western styles to a more meditative and intuitive way of creation. Kenneth participated in several group shows and created his first installations during this time.
Kenneth withdrew from Maryland in 1993 and began working independently. A year of study and practice led him to Naropa University in Boulder, CO. Naropa is the only liberal arts college founded on Buddhist philosophy in the United States. For over a year Kenneth immersed himself in the teachings and practices espoused by the school. Artwork from this period was exhibited at Eclectic Art Gallery in Denver and at Naropa in Boulder.
The impending birth of his daughter and the desire to connect with a larger art world led Kenneth to Chicago in 1995. Discoveries of C. G. Jung’s research with mandalas and the intensity of an urban environment led Kenneth’s work in an entirely new direction. Text became an important element used to create images by weaving layers together. Several exhibitions and a variable ongoing public installation served as outlets for his visual research.
Kenneth moved to California in 1999 looking for a place to settle and live as an artist. He graduated from Otis College of Art and Design in 2001, where he had been focusing on painting and installation in relationship to traditional and contemporary African aesthetics. His work had taken on the characteristics of multicultural magical devices that appear as if they should be part of an esoteric ritual event. He utilized text from English, Sanskrit, Arabic, and Chinese in conjunction with divination systems and magical diagrams from around the world. These paintings are a visual presentation of the complex multicultural fusion that defines contemporary human culture.
Kenneth’s current paintings are about exploring and defining time and space through abstract visual means by using simple notations. These paintings are complex meditative fields created through the excessive repetition of simple, small lines that individually reflect every moment in the history of the paintings. This meditative process creates multiple layers of marks, which interact in different ways to create a variety of visual experiences. These paintings are made primarily with a tool designed for pin-striping automobiles, which is used to apply paint to smooth or subtly textured canvas. This tool is used for relentlessly consistent mark making that appears as a kind of “micro-impressionist” technique. This technique also creates the experience of optical color mixing. The colors are not only mixed on the canvas but they also mix together in the eye of the beholder creating additional color perceptions. The simple individual marks interact and work together to create the complex visual experience of these paintings.
RESUME
1972 Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts
EDUCATION
2001 B.F.A., Painting, Otis College of Art & Design, Westchester, CA
1994-1995 The Naropa Institute, Boulder, CO
1990-1993 The University of MD, College Park, MD
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2007 Quantum Quandaries, The Jazz Bakery, Los Angeles, CA
2005 Erasing Space, Dao, Los Angeles, CA
2002 Recent Work, The Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2001 New Paintings, Paparazzi Gallery, Sherman Oaks, CA
Paintings, Flasher, Los Angeles, CA
2000 Dragons, Flasher, Los Angeles, CA
Thread of Paint, Jaco, Los Angeles, CA
1999 Monochrome Mandalas, Jaco, Los Angeles, CA
New Paintings, Garden of Childhood, Malibu, CA
1998 Hexibition, Xoinx Gallery, Chicago, IL
1997 Webs that Words Weave, Urbis Orbis Arts, Chicago, IL
1996 New Work, Xoinx Gallery, Chicago, IL
1995 Tapping the Psychosphere, Naropa University, Boulder, CO
1993 Installation, Planet X Art Space, College Park, MD
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2009 Rogue Wave, Anderson Art Collective, Carpinteria, CA
2008 In The Abstract, LAX Terminal One, Los Angeles, CA
Inglewood Open Studios, Inglewood, CA
Reclaiming: Inter-generation, 627 Carondelet, Los Angeles, CA
2008 Juried All Media, Palos Verdes Art Center,
Rancho Palos Verdes, CA
Wet Paint benefiting LACMA Arts Council, Beverly Hills, CA
2007 2007 Juried All Media, Palos Verdes Art Center, Rancho Palos Verdes, CA
Inglewood Open Sudios, Inglewood, CA
2006 Wet Paint benefiting LACMA Arts Council, Beverly Hills, CA
2004 New Paintings, Dao, Los Angeles, CA
2003 Reclaiming, 627 Carondelet, Los Angeles, CA
$200, Andrew Shire Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Art for Play, Venice, CA
The Miscellaneous, Orbetello Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2002 Urban Tents and Pods, Orbetello Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2001 Undergraduate Show, Otis College of Art & Design, Westchester, CA
Gibton, Bolsky Gallery, Westchester, CA
Auditorium, Bliss Gallery, Pasedena, CA
2000 Fiori, Santa Monica, CA
2000 Through our Eyes, Bolsky Gallery, Westchester, CA
1999 Bolsky Gallery, Westchester, CA
1996 Good’s of Evanston, Evanston, IL
1995 Eclectic Art, Denver, CO
1994 Naropa University Boulder, CO
1993 West Gallery College Park, MD
1992 West Gallery College Park, MD
1990 Maryland State Art Competition Towson, MD
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barnard, Sarah, “Thinking Green” LA Design, Fall 2008.
Stephens, Craig, “Urban Tents and Pods,” ArtScene, December 2002
SELECTED COLLECTIONS
Maril Blanchard & Beau Lippman, Gold River, CA
Lilly & Allen Schweitzer, Los Angeles, CA
Eva Edwards, Sterling, VA
Janet Siderman, Malibu, CA
Marianne & Cormac Wibberley, Hermosa Beach, CA
Terry & Stafford Taylor, Malibu, CA
Alexis Smith & Scott Grieger, Venice, CA
Ysamur Flores Pena, Ph.D., Los Angeles, CA
Billy Mendibles, Santa Barbara, CA
Mary Ta, Los Angeles, CA
Eva Roberts, Mar Vista, CA
Shalom Amar, Sherman Oaks, CA
Sunny & Chris Mellet, Denver, CO
Kat & Corey Hartman, Denver, CO
Mr. Imagination, Chicago, IL
Jim Tullio, Chicago, IL
Nathalie Scheinbein, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Anne & Barry Hamilton, Lutherville, MD
Picture Woods Ltd., Boulder, CO
Georgetown Station, Washington, DC
AWARDS
William Randolph Hearst Scholarship, The Hearst Foundation
