Kenny Cole

The Cynthia Winings Gallery presents new work by Kenny Cole in the Project Space, entitled, Low Energy: Imagining the Underworld of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve

Low Energy is an exhibition of large-scale ink and gouache paintings on Shuen paper, by artist Kenny Cole, on view in the gallery’s second floor Project Space. Presented are cross-sectional imaginings of the vast underground salt caverns of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, rendered as irregular black voids embedded into colorful layers of geologic strata. The 700 million barrel capacity Reserve, first started by the U.S. after the 1973 energy crisis, is currently releasing oil to curb shortages created by the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Artist Statement : Low Energy

Among the many threads in my work, the motif of the geological strata has come about from a combination of interests, both aesthetic and personal. I have always been interested in geology, and own a few books on exploring road cuts. Somewhere around 2008 I started sketching strata as colorful stripes. At that time it felt like both a flag and a geologic schematic and shortly thereafter a more expansive dialogue ensued. Ideas of caves and volcanoes have also played into the geologic strata motif broadening into a general fascination with epic natural and unnatural cataclysms like tornadoes and explosions.

“Low Energy” picks up on a recent interest of mine regarding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and folds this narrative into the ongoing thread of schematic geological layers and more specifically, rendering a diagrammatic language as a way of “picturing” things that we might not be able to literally see. For me there is a bonus with certain kinds of schematic renderings and in particular with diagramming geologic strata, in how you can be free to really render each geologic layer whatever color, hue, pattern or shade strikes your fancy. 

In the fall of 2021 I had noticed that there seemed to be mention of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in various news stories. I don’t listen to a lot of news, but go through phases of listening while driving to and from work. By not listening continuously I create a kind of mini Rip Van Winkle effect after I tune back in and then find that certain things can strike me as new or certain phrases or items can sound fresh or odd to my ears in an almost poetic way. Sometimes I am able to glean imagery out of news items in this way. As I pondered the phrase “Strategic Petroleum Reserve” I wondered exactly what it physically was? I soon researched and discovered its nature, structure and geologic features, as repurposed salt caves located deep underground, which could be filled with millions of barrels of crude oil. 

I immediately knew that I wanted to simply depict it within certain specific motifs and art processes that I had explored and rendered over the years. One very recent process, for me, has been with ink flows on rice paper. Here I had created black atmospheres as backdrops to cave interiors, figures, or billowing black ink as dense smoke and atomic mushroom clouds. The organic, accidental contours of flowing ink would be perfect for depicting the vast irregular profiles of underground reservoirs. This process and the geological strata motif are the two threads in my aesthetic that are the structure of this body of work.

In contemplating the Strategic Petroleum Reserve I researched diagrammatic renderings of salt dome caverns, found examples of underground oil storage systems around the globe, read a bit of the history and reasoning behind the start of the U.S. program and looked for information regarding any problems that underground oil storage may have encountered. Quite frankly as I sought to learn about this practice I came to instinctively feel that the whole enterprise was a strange and ironic human foible. Why would we drill for, and then extract, oil, only to then pour it back into a large hole in the ground? Logically, these large underground caverns are stable infrastructural spaces that could hold huge volumes. But other questions also came to my mind, like, “Would these caverns of oil ever be emptied, or would they just eternally be reservoirs that you would take small amounts from, only to shortly refill?” “If you did choose to ever remove all of the oil, would there be a residue or amount that could not be removed and left within an oily cavernous space for eternity?” It seems one thing to burn oil, which is a whole separate ecological disaster to contemplate and another thing to process it to a state beyond its natural condition, only to then pump it back into the earth.

On the political side of things, these reserves represent a strategy of decreasing dependence on foreign trade in times of conflict. Ultimately my visual explorations contemplate how we care for the foundation of our existence, the earth. In the contrivances of our innumerable social arrangements we design to build upon, and burrow into our planet, damming rivers, mining resources in order to feed our populations' ever expanding needs.

For me as an artist, I only have my ability to paint, render or create forms as my way of understanding or communicating my feelings and thoughts about the world. I feel that if I can produce something that explores a particular condition that exists in the world, I can then have that expression as a touchstone that I can then use to think more about it. Beyond the overwhelming despair I feel in contemplating the ecological destruction that resource extraction engenders (Here the double meaning of “Low Energy” serves as an expression of this despair!), as an artist, I can be both literal and imaginative at the same time and open up questions about relationships that otherwise might go unquestioned.

Kenny Cole April 2022