Primary Medium

Painting

Address

1155 Manhattan Ave
5th floor
Brooklyn, 11222

Artist Statement

I work in the zone between abstract and representational. Basically I paint and draw. I am making pictures. I often use images and ideas from nature and decoration. I riff on patterns and repetition. I like systems and networks. But with any and all of it I want to push it outside its comfort zone. I don’t want to make pretty nature pieces. Or anything perfect and precise. Although I do want to make something beautiful — but beautiful and mysterious, beautiful and disturbing, beautiful and melancholy. I think of this two dimensional rectangle of the piece as a kind of window that isolates something from an ongoing forever kind of space. I work with elements that might seem opposite like: Light and dark, positive and negative, addition and subtraction, upheaval and calm, and so on. It’s important for me to balance these in the work. I’m not sure if it is either or, or could be either and.

Links

Website: http://tomkoken.com
Instagram: @tomkokenart