Glenn Kaino

Last updated

Glenn Kaino
Glenn Kaino at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival (cropped).jpg
Kaino at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival
Born1972
Alma mater
OccupationFilmmaker

Glenn Akira Kaino (born 1972) is an American conceptual artist based in Los Angeles.

Contents

Early life, education and artistic training

Kaino was born in Los Angeles. Kaino grew up in Cerritos and East Los Angeles; he is fourth-generation Japanese-American.[ citation needed ] He attended UC Irvine and received a BA in 1993 after which he attended UC San Diego where he completed an MFA in 1997. [1]

Trained as a sculptor, Kaino came of age in the late 1980s – early 1990s, at the height of the culture wars. Working closely with teachers and mentors who at the time were engaged in a critically important reevaluation about the role of identity and politics in contemporary art, Kaino emerged as a member of the first generation of artists of color in the U.S. to begin to consider the ways through which contemporary art could be responsive to the conceptual turn while remaining faithful to the political project of artists and activists of prior decades. [2]

Early career

Developing his practice at the height of the Internet boom, Kaino began to explore ideas of systems as a way to bring distinct wisdoms and knowledge forms into the language of contemporary art. Informed by the process of kitbashing, akin to a model-maker's process of reassembling standard models and structures into new and innovative forms, Kaino began to approach his sculptural process as a form of conceptual kit-bashing—appropriating the languages, logics, production processes, and value systems of various fields of study to apply them to his artistic process as a way to consolidate improbable materials. [3]

Artwork

Kaino's work ranges across a wide range of media including drawing, painting, sculpture, video, and performance.

Kaino's most well-known works include Desktop Operations, a large-scale sand castle structure he debuted at the 2004 Whitney Biennial; [4] In Revolution, a kinetic sculptural illusion encompassing a rapidly spinning Aeron chair that unveils the image of a chalice as it rotates inside its incubator; [5] Untitled (Reverse Inverse Ninja Law), a large-scale levitating hammer sculpture made from thousands of small Zapatista dolls made through a collaboration with Zapatista activists in Chiapas; [6] The Burning Boards, a sculptural moment first shown at the Whitney Museum at Altria that encompasses a chess tournament played with burning candles; Safe, a sculpture made from amassed secrets[ clarification needed ] that visualizes secrecy in material form; [7] Arch, a large-scale sculpture commissioned by the City of Pittsburgh and the Heinz Endowment; [8] and In Every Grain, a sculptural environment in which he used air and sand to construct an ephemeral and temporary city-like sculpture for the US Pavilion at the 13th International Cairo Biennale in 2013, where he represented the US. [9]

Kaino's most recent installation, Sails, was commissioned for Intuit Dome in Los Angeles, to be opened in August 2024. [10]

Kaino's work has been exhibited internationally and is included in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; [11] the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; [12] the Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA), Newport Beach, California; the Museum Folkwang Essen; and the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City.

Influences and collaborations

In addition to his studio practice, Kaino has collaborated with a wide range of organizations and companies on creative projects. An expansion of his ongoing interest in finding platforms in which art and creativity expand beyond the boundaries of the cultural institution, Kaino has worked with Universal Music Group on Farmclub.com and Napster 2.0. [13]

Kaino has also helped create various experimental venues to support the work of other artists. Working with collaborators Daniel Joseph Martinez, Rolo Castillo, and Tracey Shiffman, Kaino co-founded the seminal artist-run gallery Deep River in Los Angeles in 1997. [14] Throughout its five years of existence, it was a beacon for artists and experimental practices in Los Angeles. Kaino was also a founding board member of LA><ART [15] and more recently he created the performance art duo A.Bandit with magician Derek DelGaudio. [16]

Exhibitions

Awards and nominations

Personal life

Glenn Kaino is married to fashion designer Corey Lynn Calter. They live in Los Angeles with their two daughters, Stella and Sadie, along with their dogs, Gilbert and Winston. [28]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glenn Ligon</span> American conceptual artist (born 1960)

Glenn Ligon is an American conceptual artist whose work explores race, language, desire, sexuality, and identity. Based in New York City, Ligon's work often draws on 20th century literature and speech of 20th century cultural figures such as James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Gertrude Stein, Jean Genet, and Richard Pryor. He is noted as one of the originators of the term Post-Blackness.

Tim Hawkinson is an American artist who mostly works as a sculptor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego</span> American art museum in California

The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD) is an art museum in La Jolla, a community of San Diego, California. It is focused on the collection, preservation, exhibition, and interpretation of works of art from 1950 to the present.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Orange County Museum of Art</span> American art museum in California

The Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located on the campus of the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, California. The museum's collection comprises more than 4,500 objects, with a concentration on the art of California and the Pacific Rim from the early 20th century to present. Exhibits include traditional paintings, sculptures, and photography, as well as new media in the form of video, digital, and installation art.

Lisa Sigal is a contemporary artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Martin Kersels is an American contemporary artist. Kersels' work is largely installation based, incorporating sculpture, photography and video. Kersels is a professor of sculpture and director of graduate studies at the Yale School of Art.

Charles Ray is a Los Angeles–based American sculptor. He is known for his strange and enigmatic sculptures that draw the viewer's perceptual judgments into question in jarring and unexpected ways. In 2007, Christopher Knight in the Los Angeles Times wrote that Ray's "career as an artist…is easily among the most important of the last twenty years."

Lita Albuquerque is an American installation, environmental artist, painter and sculptor. She is a part of the core faculty in the Graduate Fine Art Program at Art Center College of Design.

Nancy Rubins is an American sculptor and installation artist. Her sculptural works are primarily composed of blooming arrangements of large rigid objects such as televisions, small appliances, camping and construction trailers, hot water heaters, mattresses, airplane parts, rowboats, kayaks, canoes, surfboards, and other objects. Works such as Big Edge at CityCenter in Las Vegas contain over 200 boat vessels. Stainless Steel, Aluminum, Monochrome I, Built to Live Anywhere, at Home Here, at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, contains 66 used aluminum boats and rises to a height of 30 ft.

Sarah Cain, is an American contemporary artist.

Daniel Joseph Martinez is a Los Angeles–based contemporary artist.

Zarouhie Abdalian is an American artist of Armenian descent, known for site-specific sculptures and installations.

Jennifer Pastor is an American sculptor and Professor of Visual Arts at the University of California Irvine. Pastor examines issues of space encompassing structure, body and object orientations, imaginary forms, narrative and progressions of sequence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrea Chung</span> American artist (born 1978)

Andrea Chung is an American artist born in Newark, NJ and currently works in San Diego, CA. Her work focuses primarily on island nations in the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean Sea; specifically on how outsiders perceive a fantastic reality in spaces deemed as “paradise”. In conjunction, she explores relationships between these cultures, migration, and labor - all within the context of colonial and postcolonial regimes. Her projects bring in conscientious elements of her own labor and incorporate materials significant to the cultures she studies. This can be seen in works such as, “Bato Disik”, displayed in 2013 at the Helmuth Projects, where the medium of sugar represents the legacy of sugar plantations and colonial regime.

Hannah Greely is an American mixed media artist. She mainly creates site-specific sculptural works that seek to redefine the boundary between art and life. Her sculptures are colorful and often replicate ordinary objects or subjects, with subtle incongruencies in material or form. Her material experimentations lend the work an uncanny quality, as recognizable objects fade from real to fictional. Greely’s work explores open dialogue between object and environment, as well as the theatrical otherness of sculpture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Françoise Grossen</span>

Françoise Grossen is a textile artist known for her braided and knotted rope sculptures. She lives and works in New York City. Grossen’s work has been acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; and the State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anna Sew Hoy</span> American sculptor

Anna Sew Hoy is an American sculptor based in Los Angeles, California. She utilizes sculpture, ceramics, public art and performance to connect with our environment, and to demonstrate the power found in the fleeting and handmade. Her work has been at the forefront of a re-engagement with clay in contemporary art, and is identified with a critical rethinking of the relationship between art and craft.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Judith Simonian</span> American painter

Judith Simonian is an American artist known for her montage-like paintings and early urban public art. She began her career as a significant participant in an emergent 1980s downtown Los Angeles art scene that spawned street art and performances, galleries and institutions such as Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) and Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art (LAICA), before moving to New York City in 1985.

Elizabeth Armstrong is an American curator of contemporary and modern art. Beginning in the late 1980s, she served in chief curatorial and leadership roles at the Walker Art Center, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA), Minneapolis Institute of Arts and Palm Springs Art Museum. She has organized numerous touring exhibitions and catalogues that gained national and international attention; among the best known are: "In the Spirit of Fluxus", "Ultrabaroque: Aspects of Post-Latin American Art", and "Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury". She is also known for organizing three California Biennials (2002–6) and notable exhibitions of David Reed and Mary Heilmann. Armstrong's curatorial work and publications have been recognized by the Andy Warhol Foundation, the Center for Curatorial Leadership, the Getty Foundation Pacific Standard Time project and the National Endowment for the Arts, among other organizations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Erik Levine</span> Artist

Erik Levine is an American visual artist. He is a Professor of Art in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

References

  1. "Glenn Akira Kaino". Studio Museum in Harlem. March 27, 2014. Retrieved January 26, 2025.
  2. LaBelle, Charles. "GLENN KAINO: Fish Out of Water". Charles Labelle | Selected Criticism. Archived from the original on November 13, 2013. Retrieved February 28, 2013.
  3. Berardini, Andrew. "Fall Art Preview". LA Weekly. Archived from the original on November 13, 2013. Retrieved September 23, 2011.
  4. Plagens, Peter (March 21, 2004). "Art's Star Search." Newsweek. Archived February 22, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
  5. Stacy, Greg (February 14, 2008). "Karen Finley, Glenn Kaino, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Martin Kersels at OCMA's 'Disorderly Conduct'." Orange County Weekly Archived October 19, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
  6. Firstenberg, Lauri (2006). "Ninjas and Pirates, Revolution and Romanticism: Lauri Firstenberg in Conversation with Glenn Kaino" Archived November 13, 2013, at the Wayback Machine Art Papers, November/December 2006 issue. Retrieved February 25, 2013
  7. Finkel, Jori (September 23, 2010). "Glenn Kaino turns magic into art." Los Angeles Times.
  8. 1 2 Thomas, Mary (July 16, 2008). "L.A. artist's work transforms at Warhol Museum". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette . Retrieved February 25, 2013.
  9. UC Irvine Studio Art Department (May 15, 2012) Glenn Kaino to Represent the US at the Cairo Biennale Archived January 13, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
  10. Pogrebin, Robin (July 10, 2024). "The New Home of the L.A. Clippers Is a Hot Ticket for Art". The New York Times. Retrieved July 10, 2024.
  11. Hammer Museum. Glenn Kaino Archived November 13, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
  12. Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego. Glenn Kaino: (Untitled) Reverse Inverse Ninja Law Archived July 6, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
  13. "Napster Appoints Music Industry Veteran to Lead Artist and Label Relations". PR Newswire (March 23, 2004). Archived from the original on November 13, 2013. Retrieved February 28, 2013.
  14. Yun, Michelle (2011). "Kaino, Glenn Akira" in The Grove Encyclopedia of American Art, Vol. 1, pp. 8–9. Oxford University Press
  15. "Founder's Board". LAXART. Archived from the original on January 22, 2013. Retrieved February 28, 2013.
  16. Calendar, The Kitchen. A.Bandit: Experiments from The (Space) Between featuring Glenn Kaino and Derek DelGaudio Archived January 29, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
  17. Cotter, Holland (October 31, 2003). "ART IN REVIEW; Glenn Kaino". The New York Times. Retrieved July 10, 2024.
  18. Knight, Christopher (June 25, 1999). "Laundromat Series Awash in Art History". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved July 10, 2024.
  19. "Glenn Kaino's Bring Me The Hands of Piri Reis at Honor Fraser Gallery". e-flux Agenda. Retrieved June 7, 2024.
  20. Mohseni, Yasmine (September 30, 2011). "Interview with Glenn Kaino: Now you see him..." The Art Newspaper. Retrieved July 10, 2024.
  21. Berger, Erin (April 10, 2017). "An Art-Fueled Road Trip in the Southern California Desert". Outside. Retrieved July 10, 2024.
  22. Janay Manigoult, Taylor (December 12, 2018). "With Drawn Arms: Glenn Kaino & Tommie Smith". Art Papers. Retrieved July 10, 2024.
  23. "Glenn Kaino in the Light of a Shadow | MASS MoCA". August 11, 2020. Archived from the original on May 20, 2021. Retrieved May 20, 2021.
  24. Vankin, Deborah (May 12, 2022). "Step into Glenn Kaino's magical and immersive forest installation". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved July 10, 2024.
  25. California Community Foundation. About The Fellowships for Visual Artists Archived February 17, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
  26. Newsdesk, Smithsonian Institution (August 6, 2012). "Smithsonian American Art Museum Announces Artists Nominated for its Contemporary Artist Award" Archived January 25, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
  27. PR Newswire (February 28, 2012). "Glenn Kaino to Represent the U.S. at the 13th International Cairo Biennale Slated for December 2012" Archived November 13, 2013, at the Wayback Machine . Retrieved February 26, 2013.
  28. Price, Nina. "2013 Looks Bright for LA-Based Power Duo". Los Angeles Confidential Archived January 16, 2013, at the Wayback Machine