By Ken Aptekar
Located in Surfside, FL
Ken Aptekar
American (b. 1950)
Go Know (Study)
1996
Graphite, white pigment, transparency film, and staples on paper
Hand signed lower right
sheet: 18 x 18 inches
frame dimensions: 21 x 21 x 1 3/4 inches, wood frame with acrylic glazing
Ken Aptekar is an artist who combines painting with text. He paints new versions of historical paintings and frames, bolting glass with sandblasted words to his painted panels. Aptekar’s work belongs to the tradition of painting, yet he brings to that tradition a recognition that paintings produce meaning only through their interaction with viewers. He investigates the nature of spectatorship. By “recreating” works of art in a painterly but utilitarian manner, Aptekar promotes viewers’ own narratives prompted by the image-text combinations.
Born in Detroit, Aptekar received his BFA at the University of Michigan, then moved to Brooklyn to complete an MFA at Pratt Institute. Most recently, his work was featured at the Jewish Museum in Vienna, Austria, and in the Biennale Internationale d’Autun, in Autun, France. A major commissioned solo exhibition, NACHBARN (“NEIGHBORS”), 2016, was on view at the St. Annen Museum in Lübeck, Germany, including paintings with text, silverpoint drawings, and video all based upon medieval altarpieces in the St. Annen Museum’s collection.
Previously, his work has been seen in solo exhibitions at the Victoria & Albert Museum in collaboration with the Serpentine Gallery (London), the Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), Memorial Art Gallery (Rochester, NY), Centro da Cultura Judaica (Sao Paolo, Brazil), Musée Robert Dubois-Corneau (Brunoy, France), the New Museum (New York, NY), Douglas Cooley Gallery at Reed College (Portland, OR), Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State (State College, PA), Cummer Museum (Jacksonville, FL), and the Elaine Jacob Gallery at Wayne State University (Detroit, MI). In 2012 Aptekar’s work was the subject of a survey exhibition, “Ken Aptekar: Look Again,” at the Beard and Weil Galleries, Wheaton College, Massachusetts. He was in the show Words & Music
with John Giorno, Cheonae Kim...
Category
Late 20th Century Conceptual Pencil Mixed Media
MaterialsPaper, Film, Graphite, Pigment