Internationally recognized, Kansas City-based artist, and former Roslindale resident, Kevin Townsend makes large scale drawings that record and visualize the passage of time. His newest drawing, titled radicant moments, will be a 230 square foot work installed at The Substation in Roslindale. It will quantify every moment of a 40-hour work week. This installation is made possible through a generous grant from the George B. Henderson Foundation.
In the historic substation building, with soaring 34-foot high ceilings, the 40 hours it will take to complete this drawing connects indirectly to the historic use of the building as powering the transportation used by people heading to a traditional work week and directly to the co-working environment in which Townsend will invariably be a part. In addition to being a community connecting point where art and performance occur, The Substation also houses Workhub at the Substation, a coworking space that will be open and co-exist during the art installation.
“The drawing is about art and the work of art-making finding new roots in our communities and moments of our daily lives and acknowledging time as our most precious commodity,” says Townsend.
Drawing directly on the wall surface of the elevator shaft in The Substation’s grandiose main level, Townsend will deposit hundreds of thousands of humble marks — each mark a tick of the clock. The building’s large street-facing, glass curtain wall, looking directly upon Roslindale Square, will become a viewing screen displaying close-up process videos of the drawing in progress. Passers-by and the public in the square will be able to engage with the project as the process unfolds over time.
The Substation will be open to the public throughout the week of September 12 – 16, for those who wish to wander in and observe the durational drawing emerge. Meanwhile, the simultaneous video projection of the drawing on the iconic street-facing glass curtain will engage passers-by with the projected footage of Townsend’s art making. The project will culminate with remarks from the artist on Friday, September 16 at 4pm, coinciding with the Jack’s Abby beer hall hours at The Substation.
Kevin Townsend is an American expanded drawing artist. His distinct approach to time-based, performative drawing has been exhibited internationally and included in Performance Drawing: New Practices since 1945 by Carali McCall, Bloomsbury Visual Arts. Townsend's large-scale works are composed, rendered, and exhibited on-site, directly on urban surfaces, the facades of buildings, or the walls of museums, and galleries in cities across the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia. The drawings are decidedly low entropy arrangements that do not feel like a random collection of lines. The accumulated marks evoke swarms, fields, clouds, flows, or topographies that index the passage of time and a laboring body's movement through space.
Radicant moments joins More than Finite, a site-specific work by Cuban-American artist Gabriel Sosa installed on the risers of the internal stairway of The Substation. The two installations intend to engage viewers with undernoticed elements of the building and encourage a broader experience with the historic space.