Camp – Rene Farkass

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Rene Farkass

Exhbition: May 9th – June 7th,  2015

Artist Statement:
I am a figurative-based visual artist who uses appropriated material as my main visual medium for rendering the human form. I also document courtroom proceedings, such as the Joe Nacchio insider trading trial, on my own initiative at the City and County of Denver building and the Federal Court Center. 

Both my drawing and painting styles are linear in nature, usually with an emphasis on a contoured, illustrative approach to the subject matter. The composition is usually stylized and incorporated in a loosely patterned color theme or in an appropriated text-based background. My artwork, regardless of the medium, almost always starts out as a drawing or sketch, created in the moment. In my figurative drawing work, I like to work with charcoal and pastels. My sketches are typically ink drawings rendered in a sketchbook I carry on me at all times. For figurative pieces, I chose the background material based on the pose and how it can interact with the text that is already printed on the page. I typically recreate about two-thirds of my drawings into oil and acrylic paintings. 

What fuels me as an artist is the daily practice of exploring and crafting beauty through a well-depicted figure and through the relationship the human form has with the shapes and negative spaces of text, sheet music, even cartography. My personal definition of art is that it is a relationship. Art is also a discovery process, and every one of my pieces is created as a discovery of the human figure, human emotions, or human surroundings. It is a process of humans seeing themselves through the connections between creator and creativity, artist and artwork, painter and audience, and artwork and audience. All of these processes are in relationship with their surrounding physical, spatial and temporal environments. 

The ultimate relationship that prolongs art’s life is the one between audience and memory. I challenge myself everyday to maintain that relationship in my artwork and to find new ways others can connect to how I perceive and recreate surroundings that move me.

About the Artist:
With a distinctive style that sets him apart in both tone and personality, Rene Farkass has been a recognized artist in the alternative Denver art scene for over 15 years.

Originally from Washington, D.C., Rene exhibited his first show at the Smithsonian Institute’s Museum of American Art. He then went on to study painting at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York and began specializing in figurative works and cityscape scenes. Back in Washington, D.C., he was an active member of the experimental art and performance scene and created The Boogins, an arts magazine that featured a variety of new, emerging, and established graphic artists. 

After also living in Baltimore, Chicago, and Los Angeles, Rene decided to make Denver his home in 1995. His artwork can be seen all over the local alternative gallery scene, and he has been featured in KWGN Channel 2, Westword and the ongoing Monday Night Art Talks. In October, 2010, he married his wife Safa Samiezade’-Yazd, arts and music editor for non-profit news source Aslan Media Initiatives.

Photography by Amanda Tipton