KIOSK HELLO

We are proud to show this long­time idol of ours. Ken Brown, the cre­ator of all those post­cards that so inspired us to this day.  Sel­dom did we feel as dumb­founded as when we real­ized all these pic­tures we had lit­tered our walls with (oh, and I had a few wicked rub­ber stamps too) came from one and the same source — Ken Brown’s imag­i­na­tion. A very influ­en­tial imag­i­na­tion indeed…

Post­cards from Ken Brown, a ret­ro­spec­tive of sorts… after read­ing Ken’s answers to our ques­tions I think you will under­stand exactly why we invited him to KIOSK.

Open­ing Party June 11 from 7 –9 pm, the show will be on view from June 11 — June 20th. Post­cards for look­ing, post­cards for buying.

Back­ground:
“My first expe­ri­ence as a prac­tic­ing artist was as a film maker. Dur­ing the late 60’s I cre­ated dozens of short exper­i­men­tal films that became part of a New Eng­land based light show which for over 2 and a half years played with every­one from Jimi Hen­drix to the Vel­vet Under­ground, the Who etc.”

Rea­son:
“I’ve always loved post­cards. They are the orig­i­nal pop­ulist medium, afford­able, acces­si­ble and abun­dant and, as an artist inter­ested in skirt­ing the gallery sys­tem, they seemed like an ideal way to get work out to a larger audi­ence. I admit that I had no idea what I was doing and had no busi­ness plan, but in 1975, I took what lit­tle sav­ings I had and invested in a print run of 2000 each of 12 dif­fer­ent pho­to­graphic postcards.”

Devel­op­ment:
“In 1985, in another feet first pro­duc­tion, we moved to NYC. I con­tinue to jug­gle design work as an active art/entrepreneurial enter­prise while also pro­duc­ing reg­u­lar spots for MTV and Sesame St. Also in 1985, Harper and Row (now Harper Collins) pub­lish a col­lec­tion of my car­toons– Notes from the Ner­vous Break­down Lane”

Influ­ences:
I have a long stand­ing love of Amer­i­can pop cul­ture and it remains a con­stant theme through­out my work.

How many cards:
Over 34 years and close to 700 dif­fer­ent designs, a rough guess would be about 2 to 3 mil­lion cards lit­ter­ing the landscape.

Sum­ma­tion:
“I love liv­ing in New York and thrive on the cul­ture and gen­eral visual vibrancy of the place.   uh oh, … start­ing to ramble”