As we brace for things to come, your support for the environment, the disenfranchised, and the arts goes a long way. We hope to see you out and about embracing the positive.
Kent Manske: Inner Workings
January 9–March 19, 2025
Fairbanks Gallery
Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon
Exhibition Statement
Inquiry and introspection into the nature of things—existence, human behavior, and knowledge systems—drive my desire to create conceptual narratives. My process is an investigation that helps me uncover my own truths and better understand the world in a broader context.
I began inventing imaginary cells and organisms to focus my attention inward and distract myself from creating socio-political images. These biological forms explore evolution, consciousness, ecosystems, entropy, survival, and personal responsibility. Working with organic forms focuses my attention, provides contemplative space, and offers catharsis. I am comfortable with uncomfortable truths, uncertainty, and things beyond my understanding. Hard questions and unknowns fuel my drive to dig deeper. By processing the wonder of things, I celebrate life itself, explore ways of being in the world, and embrace my own mortality.
The biological imagery evolves through planned and unplanned layering of screen-printed ink, often yielding serendipitous and unintended results. This process searches for new relationships, rooted in the belief that the world is an expression of happenings–movement, chance, flux–rather than static things. Collage elements are created from hand-pulled, screen-based monoprints that are cut, layered, and reassembled.
Science writers who have influenced my work include Yuval Noah Harari, Brian Greene, Elizabeth Kolbert, Siddhartha Mukherjee, Lisa Randall, and Matt Ridley.
Exhibition documentation and project descriptions