John Kuzich

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ARTIST’S STATEMENT

All of my art is a reflection of my impression of life as Controlled Chaos. The work from 2004 to present is also grounded in the Psychology Of The Human Experience.
Controlled Chaos explores the relationship between order and chaos – and our need to create mental and physical routines, structures, and systems which help us counter the mysterious, unpredictable, and chaotic nature of the human experience.

The duality of our nature, the facade which masks complex inner realities, and the awakening to the spiritual fabric of life and our own spiritual self, consititute my current focus. The discovery of our spiritual self and conceptual pieces formed around the psychology of the human experience – form two distinctly different bodies of work. One more intuitive – the other more concept based; and appropriate since we all live our life by utilizing both intuition and planning – the result of our right and left brain capabliities.

ABOUT THE TRUST SERIES

I named this new body of work – which began in late 1999 – the “Trust Series”. Several months befor I began the series I had been at the tail end of a successful 25 year career as a graphic designer and was – at the time – designing websites for three major radio stations. I had won numerous awards for the web work. One day I was walking down the street to have lunch when I was struck by an unusual thought which came out of no where. The thought that overwhelmed and moved me was “Create art now and make as much as you can”. I thought this peculiar since I had a jam packed schedule working with my web clients. So I shrugged my shoulders and continued on to lunch. Interestingly, two weeks later, media giant Clear Channel bought out all the stations and took the websites in-house. With no clients and plenty of money in the bank, “I remembered those words and decided to devote my life to the full time creation of art.Intuitively I knew that this was what I was supposed to do.

I had made art all my life. Full time in the early years and then as a side interest during my graphic design career, with the exception of the time I took off to make art full time during 1982-83. I was not sure as to what I wanted to create, and so I decided to TRUST my intuition which kept pulling me toward assemblages created out of an eclectic mix of materials – mostly tiffany-style opalescent glass and metal with found objects. These early works numbering 15, became my “Architectural Series” and clearly demonstrate my love architecture and the wonderful buildings I had seen during my travels to Barcelona to view Antonio Gaudi’s Art Nouveau architecture and the many other Spanish architects. There I saw amazing buildings with ceramic tiles, mosaics, ornate metal work, stained glass, and sculptural reliefs. And so the compositions in this first series display my love of architecture – Nouveau and Modernist – as well as my love of craft.

My Architectural Series received a Seca Award nomination from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2001 and from there the work evolved into three additional series.

What I have come to realize is that all of the work from the Trust Series has taken me back to the bacic concerns of my work of the 80′s, which is the psychology of the human experience; with the most compelling themes being the facade of life and the rich and complex reality behind it, as well as the way our personalities are formed as a result of how we were raised, treated, and the roll models we had as developing human beings. The discovery of our spiritual identity and the unlimited potential within each of us is the crown jewel in this line of investigation.