Datum:

29.10.2019

Ort:

Vortragssaal Reinhold-Frank-Str.81 / Vordergebäude

Clarence Morgan ist Maler. Er lehrt an der Kunsthochschule der University of Minnesota in den USA, die er durch seine künstlerische Werksprache, aber auch seine kuratorischen Projekte und entschiedenes Engagement für die Studierenden maßgeblich geprägt hat. Die Kunstakademie Karlsruhe unterhält mit der amerikanischen Kunsthochschule einen studentischen Austausch.
Clarence Morgan hat umfänglich zu Fragen von Zeichnung, Zeit und Ornament geschrieben. Er beschreibt seine Werksprache wie folgt:

"I am interested in an approach to art making that explores the often-conflicted relationship between the decorative traditions in geometric patterns found in other cultures and western modernism. However, the recent paintings, prints and collage-drawings avoid culturally specific subject matter in favor of a more elusive pictorial terrain of contemporary abstraction. Inasmuch, my work attempts to reflect a broader generational curiosity where the familiar and unfamiliar converge. (….)“

“(….) My continued embrace of drawing is actually a return to an activity that I have come to acknowledge as the cornerstone of my studio practice. Drawing is not only the supporting structure of painting, but it also symbolizes the prospect of a certain type of intuitive intelligence. This astuteness is arrived at through the expansion of a variety of graphic and compositional structures, mark making conventions and the capacity to locate resonance within chaotic or unfamiliar visual circumstances. I am convinced that drawing exists as an authentic record of the process and experiences of thought instead of simply serving as a visual record of the material world around us. Drawing can be described as a ghostly and otherworldly agent engaged by the imagination for the purpose of liberating us from the laws that govern material reality and the confines of a tangible world. (…)