City / State / Zip / Country: New York, New York, 10038, United States
My profession: Art
About my work: Coffelt Artist Statement Primarily, my work involves ideas of chaos from order and order from chaos through historical and personal context.rnI am informed by existing aesthetic constructs that can be historically referenced. Opportunity is imbued the viewer to continue conversations of past, present, and on-going dialogs of aesthetic theory to uniquely personal levels. By nuancing my work with color, construct, and composition, I empower the viewer's involvement allowing them to give form to the indiscriminate areas that evolve in my work. I am passionate about ideas that inform.rnrnrnCurrently with my "Circuitry" series, I explore new technologies concerning duct-tape. I subvert it by utilizing it alongside traditional vellum. Although there is an inherent awkwardness of these mediums, at least in terms of their respective caches and Ideologies, fundamentally they meld well. rnrnThe premise here is to investigate the world of computer motherboards. Arrangements that are hard-edge and unforgiving and to interpret them to make them look and feel more accepting, drawing the viewer into a dialog with this arrangement in terms of what it becomes when the duct-tapes' structurally, pliable nature melds with the semi-transparency of a vellum substrate. The work becomes at once softer, warmer, and less predictable, allowing the viewer to continue dialog by going within the structures to explore further relationships to them. This linear based work overtly suggests organic structuring in spacial arrangements of thickness and thinness, from the very strong lines to the very tenuous. rnrnThis marriage between duct-tape and vellum is total debauchery in every way. The play on materials, textures and colors further my notion of opposition in each and every way giving the viewer a sense of control in positive and negative space within this multi-layering and sometimes grafting of colors and textures and different ideologies inflating the notion of a universe where subversives become part of the fabric of what is a known truth but instead of causing it to unravel, they make weaker parts stronger.
Past Clients and Projects include: Collections:rnAbsolut Museet,Stockholm, SwedenrnKen and Suzie Adams, West Hollywood, CArnAlabama Oriental Medical Arts Birmingham, AL,rnASCAP (American Society Composers Authors & Publishers) Nashville, TN,rnAnne and Warren Arrasmith Mountain Brook, AL,rnRae Bennett Phoenix, AZ, San Fran, CArnBirmingham International Airport Birmingham ALrnBirmingham Museum of Art Birmingham, ALrnSteve Burns Birmingham, ALrnAmbassador William and Catherine Cabiness Prague, Czech RepublicrnCarillon Importers Teaneck, NJrnCapital Records Nashville, TNrnCollection of Larry and Susan Cerf Oakland, CArnAmy Clifford Denver, COrnRebecca Demling Cochran, curator Atlanta, GA Collection of Stephen Cohen, gallerist, Stephen Cohen Gallery LA, CArnCollection of Michael John Cook, Ambassador to Australia Sydney, AUrnMissy Crutchfield Lookout Mountain, TNrnMorris Dees, Southern Poverty Law Center Montgomery, ALrnEmerald-Hodgson Hospital Sewanee, TNrnHouse of Fortuny, Elsa le Goza Venice, ItalyrnDr. Howard Grossman New York, NY Collection of Lila Heymann Charlottesville, VA Dr. Martha Ivey Vestavia Hills, ALrnZach and Tyndal Arrasmith Jasie Brooklyn, NYrnAmy Kaufman, Lord International Toronto, CN/New York, NYrnFrederick and Kimberly Kevorkian, Music New York, NY Rosetta and Zoran Lazic Candimedia, Toronto,Ontario, CanadarnLord International, US Headquarters New York, NYrnMercedes Corp Vance, ALrnDavid and Julie Moos, Curator AGO Toronto, Ontario, CNrnCharlotte Murdock Mountain Brook, ALrnIrene Nikolai, Gallerist, Curator New York, NYrnDr. William O'Byrne Santa Fe, NMrnParisian (Hess) Department Stores various cities USrnProgressive Insurance Corporation Mayfield, OH rnThe Ramones Estate New York, NYrnMichel Roux, CEO, Carillon Importers Provence, FrancernSaks Fifth Avenue various cities USrnJimmy and Lydia Cheney Sokol Birmingham, AL Collection of Michael Stipe, Musician Athens, GArnTime Warner/Southern Living/Cooking Light Birmingham, ALrnPeter Tunney, gallerist, The Time Is Always Now New York, NYrnUAB, University of Alabama at Birmingham Birmingham, ALrnRobert Venus and Jana Ricketts Denver, COrnVin & Sprit AB Stockholm,SwedenrnRobin and Carolyn Wade, Wade Sand & Gravel Mountain Brook, ALrnCollection of Julia and Jeffrey Ward New York, NY John Waters, Artist, Director Baltimore, MDrnBrandon Wood, Wood Accounting Los Angeles, CA
I chose this occupation because: It actually chose me
The greatest influence on my work is: My Grandfather and Grandmother
Why you'd want to hire me: Coffelt's CosmosrnJon Coffelt is a painter whose work conjures reference to several movements in recent American art. His series of Target paintings refer directly to Kenneth Noland's concentric circles of the early 1960s, which, of course, relied upon Jasper Johns's use of the target as a motif around which to organize a composition. Other works by Coffelt describe his relationship to Hard Edge or Op movements, also of the 1960s-where sequences of vertical bands recall the stripes of Gene Davis. Coffelt deploys his selected heritage in groovy contemporary terms, inventing his own combinations that translate historical movements into the present. rnrnCoffelt is a postmodernist-in the best sense of this concept. His work generates meaning by making connections to the past and demands that the viewer become engaged. This interdependence of the work is implied by Coffelt who often installs his paintings in pairs or in small clusters. Choosing to work exclusively in a 24 by 24 inch format makes this almost modular system of installation possible. Viewers can play with his works as if they are building blocks from the history of Modern painting, stacking and reconfiguring them into pairs, triads and grids. rnrnEmbracing the decorative power of painting, Coffelt allows his color to seduce and lure us with its tempting flavors. Lemon yellow, sweet pink, lime green and tart red are habitual color choices that animate his palette. Coffelt works the surface of his colors by blending the pigments with encaustic, using the wax to amplify chromatic volume. By giving his paintings titles such as Banana Fingerprint Cosmos, Gentle Pathways/Blue Horizon or Happy, Happy Grid, Coffelt declares a personal mandate for painting that is inflected by daily emotions. rnrnWhether he is tracing a particular mood on a certain day or meditating on painting's connection to a larger framework, Coffelt takes pleasure in his undertaking. Banana Fingerprint Cosmos proposes the possibility that the painter may indeed leave a significant trace of his creative activity. The image that Coffelt produces in his dot-populated Cosmos paintings rhymes with Larry Poons's ellipses, Ross Bleckner's celestial vaults and the patterns of Australian aboriginal textiles-an arc of reference that we trace across historical movements and diverse cultures. As quickly as we summon reference, however, we are arrested with the delicate beauty of the surface and the touch of the artist's own fingertips, pressed onto the pigmented surface imbued with its own identity-Coffelt's cosmos. rnrnDavid Moos, Ph.D.rnCurator of Painting and SculpturernBirmingham Museum of Art
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Beautiful and provocative work. Obviously you've put a lot of thought into what you're doing and have both a personal and historical context for it. I see your art as offering a kind of aboriginal cosmology integrated into a scientific, technological perspective.
Certainly computer and electronic circuitry is the physical architecture upon which much of our contemporary civilization has been built. Its workings have not only impacted, but virtually defined the way in which information flows in our modern world and thereby the methods by which we communicate and even think. Marshall McLuhan stated it smartly 43 years ago in his groundbreaking analysis, “The medium is the massage”.
What I see implied in your art (shall I call it ‘imp-art’?), is that our technology is as much a part of nature as a tree or field or ocean is. The physical forms it takes are microcosms that mirror the macrocosm in which we all exist as surely as the earth beneath our feet and the heavens above.
