“Something has survived,” reads the tagline for the 1997 movie, Jurassic Park: The Lost World. Undeniably, something has survived: the infatuation I have with the pop culture of my formative years, during the late eighties and the nineties. As I age, it continues to be through these “cultural glasses” that I continue to view and interpret the world, which influences the subject matter and purpose of my work. My predilection for producing collectible objects comes from my training as a potter and my persistent preoccupation with collecting toys, pop memorabilia, and nostalgic items from my youth. 

Clay and glaze are essential materials for representing my often disposable and transient subject matter as what it has, to me, truly been: enduring and precious. The mold-making and sculpting process allows me to cast, out of clay, authentic replicas of meaningful objects. Glaze and paint help to emphasize the magnificence of the material as it flows in and out of lines and wrinkles, filling the object’s surface with a wealth of depth and variation within a simplified color scheme. Gold Luster is employed sparingly to highlight specific areas of intimate interactions we have with the objects.

I find that the mold-making process imitates, in a certain way, the fossilization process. Objects are covered in a material that captures their shape and texture and this, in turn, preserves the object as a rock-like representation. Movies, television, toys and games dominated the cultural landscape of my youth. I am a product of this specific time period, and I like to think of my artwork as the fossils that will help preserve it.

My most recent body of work, The Hellenistic Series, recontextualizes ancient Greek Sculptures as pop-culture icons from the 1980’s. While making comparisons between ancient and contemporary cultures, the pieces also highlight the simultaneous difficulty and joy of growing up while trying to hold on to one’s childhood.

Brett Kern

American

Main

Artist