Stephen Kaltenbach
TOTEMS
March 1 - April 30, 2021
Artist Statement - Forest Totems
Exhibition Statement
Stephen Kaltenbach is best known as a pioneering Conceptual Artist who in the course of only a few years in New York City in the late 1960s was remarkably prolific while producing an amazing array of work. Kaltenbach was intentionally working outside of the gallery system from 1967 through 1970 and in the process, challenged our definition of what could be or is art. During this period, he produced bronze sidewalk plaques (that only became an artwork once they were placed in the ground), Time Capsules (which either did or did not contain anything - which we've never learned the answer to that question because, to date, no one has ever opened one), 12 anonymous advertisements in successive issues of Artforum magazine (1968-69) as "mini-manifestos" (his term) for artists, Room Alterations (where art had been reduced to just the room), "bad" paintings as another artist (Es Que) who was trying to get an exhibition at the Lord & Taylor's department store) and so many more challenging and compelling works before he "disappeared" back to the West Coast in 1970 in a seemingly career ending action.
Now many years later, we can appreciate how he shaped conceptual art and how we view ideas about art. What is lesser known (and only referenced as words on his sidewalk plaques - AIR and EARTH) are his works about nature and by extension, spirituality. This exhibition, Totems, will focus on those works that visually manipulated the natural world to become imbued with a sense of something larger than just ourselves in the Sky Totems in March and the Forest Totems in April along with transitional works in-between.
Sky Totems Statement by Stephen Kaltenbach:
The Sky Totems are made from photographs taken on a single day while driving through New Mexico, en route from New York City to California. All of the early sky totems are from this day. This is a repeating experience in my life; that imagery and inspiration come in bunches, sometimes concentrated on the same day. Occasionally there are other events that occur at the same time almost as an exclamation mark, as though otherwise I might miss the importance of what was happening. This time , in New Mexico, a hailstorm destroyed the new Mercedes we were driving. The photos for the Sky Totems were taken immediately afterwards as the storm clouds cleared and the sun set.
Manipulation of these photographs into bisymmetrical imagery is directly connected to the pattern work inspired by a single trip on Mescaline in 1968. I began working with pattern; which is composed of repeated bisymmetry. This consciousness led to other works, including the Love Letters, the wall paper in one of the Lord and Taylor project paintings, the Structured Fire, and the three paintings made between 1970 and 1979.
Forest Totems Statement by Stephen Kaltenbach:
The Forest Totems were generated when I was having a Giclee print made of the Stoned Maple, the second pattern painting done in 1970/71. Fifty years later when my printer offered a choice of either a white edge to cover the edge of the stretcher, or an inverted continuation of the edge of the print as wide as the stretcher, I chose the inverted edge and when I saw it from an angle, it formed the same bisymmetry that the Cloud Totems had made almost fifty years before. This discovery started my work on the Forest Totem Project. Reconfiguring prints of these paintings has created dozens of abstract images and the process continues to generate alternative avenues for investigation.
Forest Totems
Forest Totem 1, 2020
35" x 15", Giclee print on canvas, edition of 10, $2,500.00
Forest Totem 2, 2020
35" x 15", Giclee print on canvas, edition of 10, $2,500.00
Forest Totem 3, 2020
35" x 15", Giclee print on canvas, edition of 10, $2,500.00
Forest Totem 4, 2020
35" x 15", Giclee print on canvas, edition of 10, $2,500.00
Forest Totem 5, 2020
35" x 15", Giclee print on canvas, edition of 10, $2,500.00
Forest Totem 6, 2020
35" x 15", Giclee print on canvas, edition of 10, $2,500.00
Forest Totem 7, 2020
35" x 15", Giclee print on canvas, edition of 10, $2,500.00
Forest Totem 8, 2020
35" x 15", Giclee print on canvas, edition of 10, $2,500.00
Forest Totem 9, 2020
35" x 15", Giclee print on canvas, edition of 10, $2,500.00
Forest Totem 10, 2020
35" x 15", Giclee print on canvas, edition of 10, $2,500.00
Forest Totem 11, 2020
35" x 15", Giclee print on canvas, edition of 10, $2,500.00
Forest Totem 12, circa 2020
35" x 15", Giclee print on canvas, edition of 10, $2,500.00
Sky Totems
These works are listed, by the artist, as "circa dates". He acknowledges that these are very general, however, they are derived from events in his past that coincided with the making of the works and not just specifically, the production date.
Sky Totem 1, circa 1970
30" x 20", Giclee print on canvas, edition of 10, $2,500.00
Sky Totem 2, circa 1971
30" x 20", Giclee print on canvas, edition of 10, $2,500.00
Sky Totem 3, circa 1975
30" x 20", Giclee print on canvas, edition of 10, $2,500.00
Sky Totem 4, circa 1969
30" x 20", Giclee print on canvas, edition of 10, $2,500.00
Sky Totem 6, circa 2000
30" x 20", Giclee print on canvas, edition of 10, $2,500.00
Sky Totem 7, circa 1969
30" x 20", Giclee print on canvas, edition of 10, $2,500.00
Sky Totem 8, circa 1971
30" x 30", Giclee print on canvas, edition of 10, $2,500.00
Sky Totem 9, circa 2000
30" x 25", Giclee print on canvas, edition of 10, $2,500.00
Sky Totem 10, circa 1998
30" x 30", Giclee print on canvas, edition of 10, $2,500.00
Sky Totem 11, circa 2003
30" x 30", Giclee print on canvas, edition of 10, $2,500.00
Sky Totem 13, circa 1974
30" x 30", Giclee print on canvas, edition of 10, $2,500.00
Sky Totem 15, circa 1969-70
20" x 30", Giclee print on canvas, edition of 10, $2,500.00