Ric Kasini Kadour

Ric Kasini Kadour
New Orleans, Louisiana, USA & Montreal, Quebec, Canada

STATEMENT

My art practice is concept-driven and project-based. I make a variety of objects–photography, printmaking, collage, zines, and art products–that I use to tell stories. Recent and current projects include: “Kunstkammer MMCXCIX”, an ongoing series of place-based installations where  wall or room is converted into an immersive experience using collages, photographs, small paintings, sculptural objects that invite viewers to imagine a place, past and future. Operating from Year 2199, the installation bends time and history by blending historical fact and imagined fictions to tell a story from the future about the present. The stories and perspective 180 years in the future will be different than what we know today. “Portraits on the Arrival” is an ongoing series of photographic portraits in which I intercede to portray a moment of expanded consciousness. In one set, I imagine the men portrayed here on the verge of a new way of thinking and, to commemorate the moment, have their picture taken. The swirl of color conveys the ecstatic joy that comes with new ideas and fresh thinking. In another set, I present the men in cocoons, gestating and preparing for an epiphany. Other collage art includes editorial work used to illustrate texts I have written.

BIO

Ric Kasini Kadour is a writer, artist, publisher, and cultural worker. He was the recipient of a 2020-2021 Curatorial Fellowship from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. His art-making crosses media and includes collage, photography, printmaking, installations, and art product making. Kadour sees ‘zine-making as an extension of his art practice. His titles include Art Is Food (2006), How to Price Your Artwork (2005), Everything That Is Wrong With You & How To Fix It (2015), I Am Calling Today…(2016), Apotheosis Ruskin and Veneration of Ruskin (both 2017), My Pet Rock: A Tragedy & Love Story (2018), Eight Sonnets (2019), Contemporary American Regionalism: Vermont Perspectives (2019), What Good Is a Photograph (2020), Mending Fences: The Culture of Repair in Art & History (2020), The Money $how: Cash, Labor, Capitalism, and Collage (2021), America’s Promise (2021), Ozymandias (2022), Empty Columns Are a Place to Dream (2022), and I Took a Trip to the Unknown Language (2023) . Kadour started ARTSHOP in 2004 as a way of organizing, exhibiting, and sharing art products. Kadour’s INSTANT ARTSHOP (2013-2015) project took a self-contained kiosk stocked with art products to public spaces (Amish farmers markets, for example) where contemporary art rarely goes.

In January-February 2020, Kadour was artist-in-residence at MERZ Gallery in Sanquhar, Scotland. As a result of this residency, Kadour has led thirteen week-long collage artist residencies in Sanquhar, as of September 2024. In 2019, he established Kolaj Institute, a non-profit based in Louisiana support artists, curators, and writers who seek to study, document, & disseminate ideas that deepen our understanding of collage as a medium, a genre, a community, and a 21st century movement.

His artwork has been exhibited in Georgia, Louisiana, Ontario, Pennsylvania, Scotland, Quebec, and Vermont and is in private collections in Australia, Canada, France, the United States and the United Kingdom. In addition to his art practice, Kadour is the founding editor and publisher of Kolaj Magazine and has written for a number of galleries and his writing has appeared in Hyperallergic, Vermont Magazine, Seven Days, Seattle Weekly, Art New England (where he was the former Vermont editor) and many others. He has produced a number of exhibits as a gallerist and curator. His community organizing efforts have resulted in a number of large scale art events in North America and beyond. Kadour holds a BA in Comparative Religious Studies from the University of Vermont. Kadour splits his time between Montreal and New Orleans.

ARTIST CONTACT

[click to email]
www.rickasinikadour.com

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