Caroline Kent (born 1975, Sterling, IL)[1] is an American visual artist based in Chicago, best known for her large scale abstract painting works that explore the interplay between language and translation.
[2] Her work, influenced by her Mexican heritage, delves into the potentials and confines of language and reconsiders the modernist canon of abstraction.
Kent's artwork showcases an evolving dialogue of space, matter, and time, resulting in a confluence of drawings, paintings, sculpture, and performance, blurring the lines between these mediums.
[6] Her mother, a Mexican homemaker, and her father, an African American accountant, highly influenced Kent's work ethic.
[7] Kent became mesmerized by the universality of the visual language found in art, discovering that on a canvas everyone had the same starting point, without having to pass through linguistic barriers.
[9] These cultural references and personal experiences combine in Kent's work to depict a new form of communication, exploring both the powers and limitations of language.
A feature of her artistry is the consistent use of a black background as a canvas, symbolizing a void or 'unlocatable' space, offering a neutral ground for language to reside in.
[10] The large black backgrounds on the canvases in this series are meant to evoke "cosmic unknowns", serving as a metaphor for "undefinable, unlocatable spaces".
The "bold spontaneity" and rich "structuralist dynamics" of Mexican artists such has Pedro Coronel and Luis Barragán have played a role in the large scale works full of color and texture created by Kent.
[9] Through exploring her Mexican heritage in her art, Kent has been able to participate in a discourse of abstraction that has historically marginalized artists of color.
[7] The interaction with nature that is emphasized by Mexican artists has also played a role in influencing the pastel colors and organic shapes that appear in Kent's abstract works.
[7] Solo exhibitions include: Sensory Poetics: Collecting Abstraction, The Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, NY, 2022,[12] Victoria/Veronica: Making Rooms, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL 2021,[1] What the stars can't tell us, University Galleries, Illinois State University, Normal, IL, 2021,[1] A Sudden Appearance of the Sun, Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 2020,[1] and Writing Forms, Hawthorne Contemporary, Milwaukee, WI, 2020.