KENT HENRICKSEN

b. 1974, United States

Two Loves, 2005

Embroidered thread on woven fabric mounted on wood
23.625 x 55.125 in.

Collection of The Bass
Gift of Anonymous Donor
t.3.2012

Kent Henricksen, a self-taught artist, is best known for his embroidered paintings on silk in which he draws imagery from diverse sources, such as Albrecht Durer’s woodcuts, Jose Guadalupe Posada’s engravings, and Max Ernst’s collages, to create a new suggestive narrative and pictorial complexity. The humorous, yet menacing, narrative in the works often transpose historical power dynamics in using layered imagery to visually question the traditional roles of the oppressor and the oppressed across various cultures.

In his meticulously embroidered works, Henricksen explores issues of race and gender, power and conflict, juxtaposing illustrations of historical events with current contemporary images as he entices the viewer to delve into a shamanistic world of arbitrary narrative and mythic time. Inspired by the Hindu symbolism of the Trimurti, the creator, the preserver, and the destroyer, Henricksen describes his works as “representations of a troubled world with disturbing human behavior – destroying the unknown, protecting or creating the familiar, and maintaining balance of disturbance.”