Kristen Letts Kovak: November 2022
Kristen Letts Kovak is an artist, professor, and curator based in Pittsburgh, PA. Her artworks straddle the chasm between representation and abstraction, object and atmosphere, and the resulting images investigate the parallel potential of any mark to render or unravel an illusion.
Kovak graduated from Mercyhurst University and then earned her MFA in Studio Art at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Since 2012, Kovak has taught drawing, painting, and applied aesthetics at Carnegie Mellon University where she also serves as Senior Associate Dean of the College of Fine Arts.
As a curator, Kovak examines common psychological, aesthetic and theoretical questions underlying seemingly diverse artistic practices. Her recent projects at SPACE gallery (“Degrees of Separation,” “Identity Play,” and “Trumpet to the Tulips”) share a characteristic interest in balancing opposing forces to arrive at harmonious states of disequilibrium.
Kovak’s works have been exhibited widely in museums and galleries with recent solo exhibitions at 707 Penn Gallery, 709 Penn Gallery, the Westmoreland Museum of American Art, St. Michael's College, Ohio University, Baum School of Art, and the Arts Club of Washington. Her paintings and drawings have been featured in more than fifty group exhibitions including the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, Williamsburg Art and Historical Center, Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, SPACE gallery, Wildling Art Museum, Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, IUPUI, Muskegon Museum of Art, State Museum of Pennsylvania, Erie Art Museum, Museum of the Red River, Penn State University, and the Woodson Art Museum.
“My current series, “Out of Order,” investigates precarious states of visual resolution. I deliberately resist clarity and shift images into a state of disarrangement. My paintings inhabit worlds where the mystical co-exists with the explainable and a sense of familiarity lingers in the abstract. While I begin with a clear intention, I deliberately misorder my own plans, and welcome unexplained subluxations and disruptions. The paintings convey so many contradictory points of focus that realities become intertwined and individual signification is lost. The final images are a chance-medley of visceral sensations and unsettled realities. I aim for the space between resolution and interruption, knowing that the present is equal parts hypothetical and reactive.”
Artist Interview: Kristen Letts Kovak + Fred Blauth
Books featuring Kristen’s work:
Drawings at the Edge of Perception ---Benjamin Swallow Duke with Metrospace MSU
John Riegert --- Brett Yasko and Eric Lidji
Les Femme Folles: The Women ---Sally Deskins
Birds in Art ---Woodson Art Museum
