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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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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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Had the great opportunity to speak with the good folks at Vantagepointradio.com in the first half of 2020. Spoke freely on my creative endeavors and how I attempt to manage my outputs. Also had the chance to share some music that inspires me including Yusef Lateef, Narada Michael Walden, Sadistic Candle and The Nonce.
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Streaming on Vantagepointradio.com as well as iTunes, Spotify & Mixcloud.
View this post on Instagram
*Prints have sold out
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Progress images of IsoAzo, a set of hand embellished archival pigment prints for the upcoming group exhibition ‘MULTIPLES’ for HASHIMOTO CONTEMPORARY, NYC. Pulled out the vintage @automaticpens for some of the embellishments marks, as well.
Hashimoto Contemporary is pleased to present Multiples, a group exhibition featuring limited-edition HPM (hand-painted multiples) and prints.
For more information, additional images, or exclusive content, please email Jennifer Rizzo at nyc@hashimotocontemporary.com
20 JUNE – 11 JULY, 2020
HASHIMOTO CONTEMPORARY, NYC
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Installation and further exhibition details can be found here.
Galerie Openspace Presents: AUGUSTINE KOFIE | Adventures In Tonality
116 boulevard Richard Lenoir, 75011 Paris
+33 9 80 66 63 94
contact@galerieopenspace.com for all inquiries.
Opening Saturday January 18, 2020
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“Adventures in tonality” is a term coined by George Russell, an American modern jazz musician and theorist, for the first codified original theory to come from jazz. The theory re-conceptualized the matching of scales and chords, granting the player or composer tonal freedom. I drew inspiration from this notion of freedom, as well as jazz’s processes of improvisation.
A technical illustrator at heart, my painting and collage is often based on sketches. This time, I used no sketches as reference. Instead, the work in this run 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.
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The show’s accompanying 20-minute soundtrack samples my personal collection of jazz records, boasting extended, up-cycled, dusty jazz loops, spacey atmospheric transitions, lo-fi vintage cinematic intermissions, and relevant dialogue pupped from films. These sounds are the driving force behind the artworks.
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