Richard Kennedy

Awake in a Nightmare

September 25 – November 13 2022

Richard Kennedy (b. 1985 USA, lives and works in Berlin) explores the dialectic between categorization and classification on the one hand, and plurality, chaos, and complexity on the other. In the main hall of his show titled Awake in a Nightmare, colorful paintings dominate, which are either woven into stretcher frames or nets. These are accompanied by a mirrored triangular stage, slightly raised within the space, on which sculptural performance ephemera are distributed. The works are composed of commercially available sport nets into which strips of Kennedy’s discarded paintings are woven. The artist combines this traditional craft technique with the notion of upcycling. Far more profoundly, these woven works give the disregarded paintings, the failed first attempt, a second chance.
The second room is dominated by three sparse bunk beds without mattresses. They call to mind the body within the prison cell, referencing the carceral capitalism in the United States – the exploitation of their free labor within the prison system, as well as the policing of Black communities. We also encounter worn out shoes, set in ballet positions. These shoes are worn, yet empty like the bunk beds, alluding to their wearer’s absence.
For the opening, Kennedy has compiled an ensemble with Rashonda Reeves, Kyle Kidd, Mickey Mahar, Hajia Soori and Nahir to perform a new live performance entitled Dread/Rest. The work explores the sounds of prison, and the extent to which individual freedom is still possible within an environment of absolute external control. A two-channel video recording of the performance plays on a separate monitor in the library of the Kunsthalle.
Paralysis versus virtuosic movement, presence versus absence, incarceration versus liberated exuberance: in their work, Richard Kennedy weaves otherwise oppositional binaries together and calls on us to reflect on how these structures pull us between intersectionalities and socio-economic realities. Their work endeavors to lay bare what has been actively hidden, while offering us the opportunity to build bridges through our shared experience of their work.