Scary, fascinating, amazing. Kris Kuksi. I want some of whatever it is he’s on…

I first saw some of Kris Kuksi’s stuff at the Hey! exhibition in Paris this summer and I was immediately very fascinated (and thanks to Fred Le Chevalier for that). But they were totally nazi about picture taking and the ones I got (secretly) of Kuksi’s things didn’t really live up to normal wdd quality standards. And then, the fool that I am, I forgot his name. I thought it was something like Kriss Kross, but you know that doesn’t really cut it in a Google search.

And then today he came back to me via a Facebook group called Generation W.T.F. and thank you for that!

Kris Kuksi makes some crazy shit. Kinda like Giger meets Dado meets Hunter S. Thomson and decides to go all in on a drug trip. I love it. Its’ pretty dark, but at the same time extremely beautiful. You can check out his site and the pics below and they will give you some idea as to what it is that he does, but really, you have to see it in real life to fully appreciate it. It’s that cool. Especially the sculptures. Extremely intricate and although I am told much of it made from old toys glued together disassembled and put together again, it just looks like old giant marble masterpieces from the renaissance – only in miniature…
I’ve only included a few of his pieces, but there are loads more on his site.
He paints and draws too. Also extremely well. He can paint photo-realistically almost as well as Loeb and Ricter, but again with his own distinctive style. There are a few examples below and many more on his own site.

There’s a quite lenghty bio on his site, which I’ll quote here:

Born March 2, 1973, in Springfield Missouri and growing up in neighboring Kansas, Kris spent his youth in rural seclusion and isolation along with a blue-collar, working mother, two significantly older brothers, and an absent father. Open country, sparse trees, and alcoholic stepfather, all paving the way for an individual saturated in imagination and introversion. His propensity for the unusual has been a constant since childhood, a lifelong fascination that lent itself to his macabre art later in life. The grotesque to him, as it seemed, was beautiful.
Kris Kuksi garners recognition and acclaim for the intricate sculptures that result from his unique and meticulous technique. A process that requires countless hours to assemble, collect, manipulate, cut, and re-shape thousands of individual parts, finally uniting them into an orchestral-like seamless cohesion that defines the historical rise and fall of civilization and envisions the possible future(s) of humanity. Each sculpture embodies the trademarks of his philosophy and practice, while serving as a testament to the multifaceted nature of perception – From timeless iconic references of Gods and Goddess, to challenging ideas of organized religion and morality, to the struggle to understand, and bend, the limits of mortality. None is complete without a final and brilliant touch of satire and rebuke all conceived in the aesthetic essence of the Baroque fused with the modern day industrial world.

(warning: a lot of the site is in flash, which gives you a perhaps fuller, but also to the moderne web junkie like myself, more annoying experience – and you can’t see it on your iPhone)

If you ever get a chance to see his stuff live at a show, do it. And take your time, because there’s a lot of stories told in every piece. And as with most art it’s even better if you take your time, study it – go for a walkabout and then come back and take another good look and discover how even more details and more stories appear.

Copenhagen, December 2011
/N