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The official collection of up to date studio works, mural and exhibition archives can be found at augustinekofie.info. KEEP DRAFTING will be a hub for archives, select limited releases and news.
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Den-City, 2022
24″ x 18″
Limited edition HPM (Hand Painted Multiple) archival pigment print
signed and numbered edition of 30.
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Available this weekend at the Harman Projects booth at @DesignerCon 2022 in Anaheim, California. Booth 427.
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*Online Release: An online release of prints will take place on Black Friday, November 25th at www.harmanprojects.myshopify.com
PRISMA
Recent works on canvas, collage on wood and soundtrack.
AUGUSTINE KOFIE
PRISMA
5 – 26 November
It is with great pleasure we are about to open a solo show with Augustine Kofie.
Made in 2022, the PRISMA series of works on canvas is part of Kofie’s ongoing industrial approach to fine art, which incorporates techniques such as overspray, tape blocking, detailed handwork, deconstruction, and draftsmanship drawn from architecture and graffiti. Despite the precision produced by these techniques, PRISMA was created through freestyle, intuition, and improvisation, producing a painterly, atmospheric series in a dusky palette, while still exploring collisions of forms, layers and transparencies to create abstract scenarios that somehow hang outside of time.
MURAL IN AALBORG
As a native of Los Angeles, Kofie was struck by the unfamiliar pattern of triangular rooftops that repeats across Aalborg’s residential skyline. This pattern informed his first mural in Aalborg, Ekkolokation, painted as part of the 2021 Out in the Open Mural Festival, and appears again in these new works on canvas. The circular form, always prominent in Kofie’s earlier work, appears here as a background horizon or a fragment in the foreground. The visual form that dominates in PRISMA are the splintered breaks produced by the friction of shapes clashing against each other. These splintered fractures, which gather and refract all the light in the paintings, are the offshoot of Kofie’s graffiti work and hold all the pleasure, energy, and symbolism of that work.
SOUNDTRACK FOR THE SHOW
For every solo exhibition, Kofie creates a soundtrack. The music is assembled as part of the work process, which is both sonic and pictorial. This mix blends experimental chill hip-hop beats, including extended, up-cycled sophistso-pop saxophone, new wave blues breaks, lo-fi telefilm intermissions and poignant dialogue relevant to the exhibition theme and tone.
Opens Saturday, November 5, 2022
KIRK Gallery
Danmarksgade 8, 9000 Aalborg
Denmark Tlf +45 98 14 11 44
mail@kirk-gallery.com
Made in 2022, the PRISMA series of works on canvas is part of Kofie’s ongoing industrial approach to fine art, which incorporates techniques such as overspray, tape blocking, detailed handwork, deconstruction, and draftsmanship drawn from architecture and graffiti. Despite the precision produced by these techniques, PRISMA was created through freestyle, intuition, and improvisation, producing a painterly, atmospheric series in a dusky palette, while still exploring collisions of forms, layers and transparencies to create abstract scenarios that somehow hang outside of time.
As a native of Los Angeles, Kofie was struck by the unfamiliar pattern of triangular rooftops that repeats across Aalborg’s residential skyline. This pattern informed his first mural in Aalborg, Ekkolokation, painted as part of the 2021 Out in the Open Mural Festival, and appears again in these new works on canvas. The circular form, always prominent in Kofie’s earlier work, appears here as a background horizon or a fragment in the foreground. The visual form that dominates in PRISMA are the splintered breaks produced by the friction of shapes clashing against each other. These splintered fractures, which gather and refract all the light in the paintings, are the offshoot of Kofie’s graffiti work and hold all the pleasure, energy, and symbolism of that work.
For its first residency “Forme(s) Collective”, 1872 Maison d’Artistes called on 8 artists from 2 collectives : Lx.One, Augustine Kofie, Carlos Mare and Remi Rough from the collective AOC (Agents of Change) and Stéphane Carricondo, Romain Froquet, Théo Lopez and Clément Laurentin from 9e Concept . From May 23 to 29, 2022, the artists, divided into 4 duos, worked on the blockhouses of the Gurp beach in Grayan- et-l’Hôpital in France. They have honored in their own way the humanist values of sharing, encounter, history and memory in an immense in situ creation. In a fraternal way, like the liberators of D.Day, they came from the United States, England and France to express their message of peace and solidarity on these vestiges.
To give an artistic unity to their approach, they chose to pay tribute to the inventors of the disruptive camouflage used during the 1914-1918 war : the Razzle Dazzle. The point was not to camouflage boats but to give life and shine to blockhouses through their art. In a roundabout way, their reflections allow them to return to the sources of historical avant-gardes : Cubism, Futurism, Vorticism. With their free but organized interpretation, they used the blockhouses to develop an original reinterpretation of geometric abstraction and graffiti art : a perfect illustration of the vorticist precepts where energy is queen because “the point of energy is maximum when it is stationary.
Credits
Artistic direction : Lx.One
Artists : Augustine Kofie, Stéphane Carricondo, Carlos Mare, Romain Froquet, Remi Rough, Théo Lopez, Lx.One, Clément Laurentin des collectifs AOC et 9e Concept
Production : 1872 Maison d’Artistes, 9e Concept
Production management : Julie Guinamant
Photo : Thomas Lang
Video : Jules Hidrot
Assistants : Mites, Jerk 45, Ned, Gaël Lefeuvre Sound recording : Baptiste Martineau Wording : Renaud Faroux, Julie Guinamant Print : Atelier Arcay
Partners : Unikalo France, Boesner France, Château Labadie, Technipub
Contributors : Nicolas Laugero, Julien Arruti & Aurélie, Loïc Thibaut, Maxime B. & Céline DC., Sylvie J.
Special thanks to : Mites for the spot and the involvement, Xavier Hallab & Jim for the opening dinner, the town hall of Grayan-et-l’Hôpital for the technical support, and Pôle Magnetic Bordeaux.
Heron Arts Gallery presents:
R O T A T I O N S H I P S
Opening March 12th – April 9, 2022
7 Heron St,
San Francisco, California 94103
ROTATIONSHIPS is Augustine Kofie stripped down to the essence of his practice. Created over the past three years, the series reflects the artist’s longstanding interests in salvaging the forgotten remnants of the past and elevating these through futurist aesthetics. For years, the artist has obsessively collected, archived, and repurposed pressboard, a heavy, multi-ply paper stock used in packaging and office supplies from the 1950s to the 1980s. Previously, pressboard appears as the hidden architecture of Kofie’s collages, subsequently covered with layers of paint, ink, and spray. In ROTATIONSHIPS, the only “paint” used is the colored pressboard itself; brushes only apply adhesive and varnish.
Even when painting, Kofie describes his process as one of building. In this series, construction is centered in a series of “rotationships,” a word the artist coined to describe his ongoing relationships with circular forms, which always represent the feminine ideal in his work, taming and controlling the more hard-edged, angular work. Here, circles are everything—centered, interlinked, stretched into oblongs, layered transparencies—in different explorations of joining.
Kofie’s respect for pressboard stems from its durability, malleability, and shelf appeal: it can be scored, folded, coated, screen-printed, embossed, while retaining its structural integrity. Steno notepads, file folders, album covers, industrial packaging—pressboard often packages old technologies from a predigital, bygone era. The artist has sourced this modest refuse of the past at estate sales in the greater Los Angeles area (as well as flea markets the world over), from the homes, workshops, and garages of the elderly, who saved everything, when things were made to last.
A self-defined “compartamentalizer,” Kofie breaks his work process into phases. In his studio, the pressboard has been meticulously inventoried—archived by color palette, thickness, and category in vintage industrial file cabinets, “sometimes for years, sometimes for that day,” until they make their way into an assemblage. The blank file folders he screen-prints himself, making his own packaging by silk-screening salvaged security envelope patterns and other half tones onto the pressboard. Using found metal circles (also sourced at estate sales) as templates and found metal objects as weights, the only contemporary material is the wood panel support.
Production is a meditative, intuitive, embodied process. Beginning with a simple pencil sketch on wood panel—a few circles, a few crosscutting lines—Kofie then lets the given selection of pressboard guide the work, manually cutting the pieces, one by one, fitting them into a section, letting each determine the one to follow. The results are reminiscent of mandalas in the way they focus our attention, calm our spirit, and center us in an abstract space, but here these are built out of the industrial arts of our recent, collective past. Even as we enjoy the perfect symmetries, we try to read the images, to decipher the past lives of what we see. In this way, ROTATIONSHIPS is the ultimate manifestation of Kofie’s career-long commitment to salvaging the past and building it into a future.
Curated by Heron Arts director Tova Lobatz, ROTATIONSHIPS marks Augustine Kofie’s first time showing this body of work.
Sugarpress Art presents: Altered Perspectives – The Art of Non-Objective Abstraction.
Curated by SugarPressArt & GuerillaOne to benefit Artists For Trauma
Non-objective art is abstract or non-representational art. It does not represent specific objects, people, or other subjects found in the natural world. Leaving it up to the viewer to determine what they see.
Juan Carlos Muñoz Hernandez aka Heaven, Adia Millett, Jim “TAZ” Evans, ORION OWENS, Adam Bravin, Ryan Campbell, DONX, Christopher Tice, Tommy Hollenstein
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Ekkolokation by Augustine Kofie
Reberbansgade 33, Aalborg, Denmark
Curated by Kirk Gallery
Photo | @fleronfotografiogevent
View high resolution images and text HERE
Augustine Kofie Signature Shirt project | 2021SS Release | Tokyo, Horie & Shinjuku, Japan
CALIFORNIA SOUL, KOF OF PALMS & KO PAINTS
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This season offer a collection of contemporary cut-and-paste graphics celebrating my personal experience as a southern Californian, both born & raised all my life. The state that gave me a first-hand view of multiple Street cultures, all of which still resonate with me personally as well as globally to this day.
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CALIFORNIA SOUL:
This piece is a nod to so many factors in my life, especially space, color, sunshine and spirit. The light in Southern California is different than other places I’ve been to. Breaking through an overcast morning revealing sun washed tones has left an impression. This piece is also a note to my first solo exhibition in Paris in 2013 of the same name.
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KOF of PALMS:
Palms is a diverse and densely populated community in the Westside region of Los Angeles California it is one of the oldest neighborhoods annexed in the early 1900s. I spent The majority of my teens in this neighborhood and got into Graffiti, street skating, and all around adolescent chaos during this time. The design is homage to being so central to Los Angeles, bordered by The Pacific Ocean and downtown.
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KO PAINTS:
West coast based paint supply company ‘KO PAINTS’ provide a variety of materials to help complete any project around the home and studio. Many brands of industrial latex and spray are available to you at great prices. Please don’t hesitate to contact one of our well versed and experienced staff to assist you. Providing materials for painters, graphic artists and craftsmen since 1973.
These design are currently available at the @wism_shinjuku, @wism_horie & @wism_tyo shops, Japan.
*US based drop of this design available at a later date.
This item is available on now. NOT A PRESALE, Items ready to ship soon after order.
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Solo Exhibitions: 2009-2021 on black.
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Our studio is pleased to share the release of ‘Solo Exhibitions: 2009-2021’ to the public.
Written in my natural hand style, this is a breakdown of a handfull of my solo exhibition titles since 2009, including my most current showSTATE OF MIND. This is the 2nd release in an ongoing series of limited run signature t-shirts that will be available periodically all year direct from the studio. This design will be available for our SS/2021 collection to select boutiques in Japan.
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Production info / Sizing:
100% Cotton 6.5 oz Knit ring spun jersey knitted; garment dyed; constructed & printed in Southern California; sewn signature label, stamped size label. Shipped via USPS.
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AUGUSTINE KOFIE – “STATE OF MIND”
17 APRIL – 8 MAY 2021
HASHIMOTO CONTEMPORARY NYC
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Hashimoto Contemporary is pleased to present State of Mind, our debut solo exhibition with Los Angeles-based artist Augustine Kofie. Made over a period of nine months under quarantine, the collection is part of Kofie’s ongoing industrial approach to fine art, which incorporates techniques such as overspray, tape blocking, detailed handwork, deconstruction, and draftsmanship drawn from architecture, graffiti and California car culture.
The particularities of quarantine shaped the process and thus the work itself. Unlike the usual linear development of paintings from start to finish, the State of Mind collection took a much more circuitous route.
“Some of these works were very frustrating to manifest. On the one hand, I had all this extra time, but on the other, it took much longer than usual for things to take shape. Emotionally and tonally, the works run the gamut from angst to harmony. My feelings are in the brushstrokes, the movements, the process of repeatedly adding and taking away, the layers of time it took to complete these paintings,” stated the artist.
The circular form, always prominent in Kofie’s earlier work, appears here to be breaking down.
“Where your eyes want to continue to complete the circle, you are stopped. With painting, I am in control. The pandemic was a stop, an interruption, a loss of control. So these interrupted circles, which break off and take new paths, are life interrupted,” Kofie elaborated.
With art supply stores and estate sales—Kofie’s two primary sources of tools and materials—shut down, a new technique emerged. Three of the works in the collection have a textural wood support, created by collaging found materials from the artist’s archive onto hand-made wood panels. This underlying structure, painted over entirely, comes through nonetheless, adding a hidden layer of meaning, a pentimento that also speaks to our varying, overlapping states of mind this year.
For every solo exhibition, Kofie creates a soundtrack. The music is assembled as part of the work process, which is both sonic and pictorial. This mix blends experimental hip hop with chill wave, including extended, up-cycled sophistso-pop saxophone, 80s synths, new wave breaks, lo-fi telefilm intermissions and poignant dialogue relevant to the exhibition theme and tone.
The gallery will be open by appointment only. In order to ensure the health and safety of visitors and staff, please note that masks are legally required for entry. To schedule an appointment, please click HERE.
The exhibition will be on view Saturday, April 17th to Saturday, May 8th. For more information, additional images, or exclusive content, please email NYC Director, Jennifer Rizzo at nyc@hashimotocontemporary.com
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