Artist Statement:
With a dark humor, I explore the intersection of my mundane, everyday experiences with my continual existential search for meaning and purpose. I search out the gray areas where the boring transforms into the mysterious and magical and the seemingly obvious reveals new potentials and possibilities. I relish the unanswerable questions and contradictions that arise from such inquiries, maintaining a playful optimism alongside a despairing acknowledgment of the inevitability of failure.
My work takes a variety of forms including drawing, screenprinting, collage, performance, and installation. My background in punk, zine, and DIY subculture along with my early training in graphic design grounds my aesthetic sensibility. Thus the work can be crude, raw, even abrasive, yet simultaneously clean, economical, and structured. I hope to demystify the act of art making, debunk the myth of the artist as genius, and show that art making is little more than simply acting with intention on the world around us.
Bio:
Kyle Bravo lives and works in the upper 9th Ward of New Orleans. Kyle has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally from New Orleans to New York to Tokyo. He is a founding member of The Front, an artist-run exhibition space in New Orleans, and is a co-founder of Hot Iron Press – a print studio and hub for grassroots arts endeavors. Kyle is an educator, having taught art in a variety of contexts, currently at an arts-centered high school. He is also the former organizer of The NOLA Bookfair, an annual event in celebration of independent publishing and alternative media, and he is the editor of the book Making Stuff and Doing Things: A Collection of DIY Guides to Doing Just About Everything, published by Microcosm Publishing.
With a dark humor, I explore the intersection of my mundane, everyday experiences with my continual existential search for meaning and purpose. I search out the gray areas where the boring transforms into the mysterious and magical and the seemingly obvious reveals new potentials and possibilities. I relish the unanswerable questions and contradictions that arise from such inquiries, maintaining a playful optimism alongside a despairing acknowledgment of the inevitability of failure.
My work takes a variety of forms including drawing, screenprinting, collage, performance, and installation. My background in punk, zine, and DIY subculture along with my early training in graphic design grounds my aesthetic sensibility. Thus the work can be crude, raw, even abrasive, yet simultaneously clean, economical, and structured. I hope to demystify the act of art making, debunk the myth of the artist as genius, and show that art making is little more than simply acting with intention on the world around us.
Bio:
Kyle Bravo lives and works in the upper 9th Ward of New Orleans. Kyle has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally from New Orleans to New York to Tokyo. He is a founding member of The Front, an artist-run exhibition space in New Orleans, and is a co-founder of Hot Iron Press – a print studio and hub for grassroots arts endeavors. Kyle is an educator, having taught art in a variety of contexts, currently at an arts-centered high school. He is also the former organizer of The NOLA Bookfair, an annual event in celebration of independent publishing and alternative media, and he is the editor of the book Making Stuff and Doing Things: A Collection of DIY Guides to Doing Just About Everything, published by Microcosm Publishing.
