The Jeonnam Museum of Art will hold Richard Kennedy's solo exhibition Acey- Deucey to showcase the forefront of contemporary art trends to the audience in 2023. Richard Kennedy (b. Long Beach, California 1985) began creating performances, writing music, and designing costumes as a child. With a talent for music, writing, visual art, and dance, they rapidly rose to prominence in the local art community in Middletown, OH, receiving a scholarship to study ballet and opera. Not long after graduating high school, they moved to New York City and performed in West Side Story and Wicked, before leaving the commercial theatre to amplify their voice. As a multi-disciplinary artist active in art spaces and queer nightlife venues, they discovered new possibilities to develop an embodied and experimental practice that defied boundary and genre. Opera became the foundation of Kennedy’s work, and a metaphor for marginalized existence. After moving to Berlin in 2019, Kennedy began formal experiments with new art forms, synthesizing the diverse experiences of their life into paintings, sculpture, and video.

Throughout their new solo exhibition Acey-Deucey, Kennedy’s work reveals the world's stereotypes and breaks down its boundaries. Presenting an alternative path that does not belong to anyone, Acey-Deucey dissolves dichotomous value systems – black/white, male/female, physical/spiritual, winner/loser, teacher/pupil, high culture/popular culture, instantaneous/permanence. Wielding their brush with grand gestures, Kennedy leaves queer traces on the canvas, whiting out the concrete and veiling previous assumptions of the non-coastal African American queer experience. Finding a new freedom to fail within the space of their recent painting practice has led them to produce large-scale weavings, transforming their failures into triumphs. Featuring over 20 works, Acey-Deucey also includes live performances and a new video, Miracle W.I.P.

Richard Kennedy(1985~)