BB Consciousness 2023 41x31 - Huge

Year2023

Hand SignedOn Verso 

Condition Excellent 

Framed without GlassNatural Wooden Floating Frame 

Purchased fromArtist 2023 

Provenance / HistoryThis work is one of several new works based on concepts of consciousness that follow up on a grand series of paintings entitled "Octopus Consciousness", a painterly meditation series on this highly intelligent and remarkably sentient creature. So many concepts of "self" come to us by position sense or as Nicholas Humphrey says in his book entitled, "Sentience", proprioception. The body uses sensors in joints and muscles along with senses to perceive the spatial location of body parts. This physical sense coupled with experientially based memory (Iconic imagery) push forward bodily responses to create meaningful movement...particularly so when moving a brush, or a tool informed by memory and an action response to materiality. These paintings do that and become a series of works thinking about space-time in the making of art. 

Story / Additional InfoThe recent Nobel Prize in Physics (2022)went to two physicists who demonstrated the theory of a non-local universe in which particles who have had entanglement continue to influence each other even at great cosmic distances. Something happening to one immediately causes a reaction in the other. It appears to happen outside space-time and at a rate faster than the speed of light. Imagining such overlapping energy fields is a part of how the structures of these paintings occur and in an emergent manner, with simple systems combining to form larger complex structures. 

Certificate of AuthenticityArt Brokerage 

LID160537

Ed Kerns - United States

Art Brokerage: Ed Kerns American Abstract Expressionist Artist: b. 1945. Ed Kerns (February 22, 1945) is an American abstract artist and educator. Kerns studied with the noted Abstract-Expressionist painter, Grace Hartigan and through the elder artist came to know and work with many artists of that generation including, Phillip Guston, Willem de Kooning, James Brooks, Ernest Briggs, Richard Diebenkorn and Sam Francis. Born in 1945 in Richmond, Virginia, Kerns started painting at a young age. He attended the Richmond Professional Institute, receiving his BFA in 1967. He went on to the Maryland Institute, where he studied with painter Grace Hartigan. Here, Kerns received the Hoffberger Fellowship and graduated with an MFA in 1969. Kerns first gained exposure in 1972, when he was commissioned by art collector Larry Aldrich to paint 100 paintings over the course of the year as gifts.That same year, Kerns had his first solo art show at the AM Sachs Gallery in New York. Over the course of the 1970s and 80s, Kerns formed a close partnership with the Rosa Esman Gallery and exhibited ten solo shows there. Of his work in the late 1970s and early 80s, gallery coordinator Judith Stein says, "He works slowly, creating no more than ten large paintings a year. His media are acrylic, sand, and thread, the last used to stitch together sections of canvas. Often plywood or upsom board is used as support." Listings wanted.