Caroline Kent

Caroline Kent (born 1975, Sterling, IL) Her work, influenced by her Mexican heritage, delves into the potentials and confines of language and reconsiders the modernist canon of abstraction. She likens her composition process to choreography, revealing an interconnectedness between language, abstraction, and painting. 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.

Early life and education Caroline Kent was born in Sterling, Illinois, United States. There she grew up with her mother, father, older sister Angela, and twin sister Christine. Her mother, a Mexican homemaker, and her father, an African American accountant, highly influenced Kent's work ethic. A self-described Midwesterner, Kent spent her summers growing up working summer jobs detasseling corn and dreaming of a greater life outside the borders of her small town.

Her work has been included in numerous museum collections across the United States such as the Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida; DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois; Dallas Museum of Art, Texas; Hammer Museum at University of California, Los Angeles, California; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois; the New Orleans Museum of Art, Louisiana; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; among others. 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. The large black backgrounds on the canvases in this series are meant to evoke "cosmic unknowns", serving as a metaphor for "undefinable, unlocatable spaces". Meanwhile the pastel shapes represent things that may have once been covered in darkness but are now illuminated.

Kent also has a unique methodology behind creating her abstract works. She allows experimentation and improvisation to direct her painting process by leaning into the logics and practice of intuition. Victoria/Veronica: Making Rooms, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL 2021, What the stars can't tell us, University Galleries, Illinois State University, Normal, IL, 2021, A Sudden Appearance of the Sun, Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 2020, and Writing Forms, Hawthorne Contemporary, Milwaukee, WI, 2020.

Awards and residencies 2020 Joan Mitchell Foundation, Painters and Sculptors Grant, New York, NY Artadia Chicago Award, New York, NY

2018 Paint School Fellowship, Shandaken: Projects, New York, NY Artist in Residence, Saint Catherine University, Saint Paul, MN

2016 McKnight Fellowship for Visual Arts, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Minneapolis, MN

2015 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York, NYArtist Initiative Grant, Minnesota State, Mankato, MN

2013 Creative City Making Grant, Minneapolis, MN

2011 Artist Initiative Grant, Minnesota State, Mankato, MN

2009 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, Jerome Foundation, St. Paul, MN

2007 Josephine Lutz Rollins Endowment, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN

2006 Josephine Lutz Rollins Endowment, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN