Kenzie Wells: TRIPLE POINT
June 3 - June 26, 2022
Opening reception: June 3, 6-10 pm
Triple Point speculates a future secret garden wherein all matter has reached its “triple point” – it is solid, liquid, and gas simultaneously. Setting the scene are rock-like sculptures layered with the residue of human activity and earthy sediments. Found objects are fused and fossilized into structures of polyurethane foam, coated in sand, cement, salt, and neon resin, lit by the soft pink glow of black light. In this distorted spacetime parallel, temperature acts as time’s non-linear counterpart, revealed through a gradual shift in appearance from day to night. Light floods in through windows during the day and gradually transitions from pink to ultraviolet as the sun sets, highlighting a flow of heat energy that would otherwise be invisible. Past, present, and future geologies coalesce in this queered, otherworldly subspace, making visible a planetary fever. Personified in this way, Earth’s increased temperatures and weather patterns become relatable, bodily dispositions; a map of being born, alive, and dead. The audience transitions between alternative worlds as they witness a warped intimacy between equilibriums of three. A vision of the way that triple points can reveal invisible environmental secrets, and the hand human activity plays in the heating of Earth’s climate system.
Artist bio:
Kenzie Wells (they/them) has attended residencies at the Wassaic Project Artist Residency in New York, Oxbow School of Art and Artists’ Residency in Michigan, and Penland School of Craft in North Carolina. They have exhibited nationally in galleries, art fairs, and museums including: SPRING/BREAK Art Show, New York, MoCA Tucson, The University of Arizona Museum of Art, and Torrance Art Museum, CA. Originally from Knoxville, TN, Wells received their BFA in 2015 from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and MFA in 2020 from the University of Arizona in Tucson. Wells currently resides in Columbia, MO where they are a Visiting Assistant Professor of Sculpture at the University of Missouri.
@kenzie_whitworth