Kent Henricksen “A Wayward to Wander”

Thierry Goldberg

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Thierry Goldberg presents A Wayward to Wander, the gallery’s first solo exhibition with Kent Henricksen. This will be the artist’s eighth New York solo presentation.

Expanding upon his installations of all-encompassing environments, A Wayward to Wander is comprised of both sculptures and wall works that continue Henricksen’s exploration of overlapping dualities— energy and matter, the primal and cerebral, the practical and the spiritual, past and present. Henricksen’s multi-disciplinary practice finds continual inspiration from Native American art, the occult, folk art, indigenous cultures and Animism.

In A Wayward to Wander, Henricksen presents his most ambitious and transcendental installation to date, highlighting the more ceremonial and esoteric aspects of his practice. Totemic ceramic plate-sized sculptures, with anthropomorphic or animal motifs raised in relief, flank the walls of the gallery, luring the viewer past a series of figural ceramic vessels, to the inner sanctum of the gallery where they are encircled by a forest of tall, black figuratively carved tree trunks seemingly suspended in a fixed, ritualistic dance.

The participatory spirit of the exhibition creates a sublime arena where mystical iconography and shamanistic practices commingle. The imposing scale of the black ungendered tree figures offers the viewer a perspective into another realm: one that interacts and communicates with benevolent and malevolent spirits.

Using a chainsaw to carve out the rudimentary and deliberately irregular forms from a singletree truck, Henricksen aligns himself with wide-ranging referents from African sculpture to the monumental wood sculptures of Georg Baselitz. Employing an extensive arsenal of tools and techniques to render the multi-faceted works in this installation, Henricksen’s desire to connect with a style and tradition remains grounded in content with a sincerity and faithfulness to his materials.

Kent Henricksen has exhibited internationally with solo shows at The Bass Museum, Miami; Contemporary Gallery of the Nassau County Museum of Art, New York; Paul Kasmin Gallery, NY; John Connelly Presents, NY; Hiromi Yoshi, Tokyo; Gerhardsen Gerner, Berlin; and Arario, Seoul. He has been included in group exhibitions at PS1, NY; Sculpture Center, NY; The Moore Space, Miami; Museum of Contemporary Art KIASMA, Helsinki; Museum of Art and Design, NY; Hirschhorn Museum, Washington D.C.; and Musee de Pully, Switzerland. Henricksen’s work is in the permanent collections at the Bass Museum, Miami; Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C; Brooklyn Museum, NY; The Fogg Museum at Harvard and the Collezione Maramotti. Henricksen lives and works in New York.