gabe.michael.kenney
The Method(s)
I use installation and performance art through the aesthetic lens of retro-futuristic science fiction to immerse the viewer into a setting that promotes curiosity and wonderment. My work visually resembles experimental science laboratories, or test zones, that include pseudo-technological devices that seek to bend and break conventional laws of reality, like time travel and teleportation. Being mostly comprised of carefully curated found objects, all the components of projects form a makeshift assemblage of materials that have been rearranged and/or altered to present new use case scenarios considered outside of the norm, like opening wormholes to parallel dimensions or making phone calls to other galaxies in the multiverse.
All the material elements come together in a particular space (often site specific) to form a kind of set, where these specific activities or events can take place. Whether it be a performance at a public exhibition, or a solo act out in the field, each event or activity is orchestrated in a ritualistic fashion with a procession of direct actions made in response to the material work. Intentions are set prior, goals are never quite clear, and the work itself manifests as the procession of actions take place.
The events that take place during exhibition openings aim to embody situational phenomena that audiences can witness & participate in. These newly created spaces and performances are used to facilitate conceptual investigations into psychological power of what it means to think, believe, and wonder. How does observing phenomena alter, or affect the phenomena itself? The audience’s participation in the coordinated public situations is used as media. Pairing the directed interactive experiences with an over-abundance of specific subject matter embodied in the saturation of materials serve as the clues to “What it’s all about.” Generally, each project inspires viewers to examine common world issues with complex perspectives, and most importantly, to assess their own roles as crucial pieces of the whole.
By using Gonzo-eque methodologies that teeter on the edge of the real and unreal, I aim to further blur the line between what is considered and accepted as possible and impossible regarding the power of the mind. Borderline absurd & comedic behaviors paired with radical speeches and improvised rants and banter that expose serious undertones of socio-political motivations that aim to use art as a tool to project novel & eclectic abstractions of the past, present & future.