STATEMENT
Garret Kane is a sculptor and writer based in Brooklyn, New York. His practice utilizes biological matter, traditional and 3D printed materials, animation, NFTs, film, and narrative, synthesizing them into hybrid works about the unending tension between nature and technology. One facet of his practice involves cutting exotic wood, 3D scanning the chasms with structured light, then printing complex geometry to seamlessly rejoin them, suggesting a future, synthetic version of the natural world.
He also repurposes detritus from the streets of New York City and fuses it with organic matter. This method of finding form and reason between trash and biomass alludes to themes of trauma and damage but also rebirth and resilience.
His work is an outgrowth of the significant art history movements of the 20th century. Drawing inspiration from innovative artists like Anselm Kiefer, Kandinsky, Rauschenberg's assemblages, Marcel Duchamp's readymades, Richard Tuttle, Edward Kienholz, Jean Tinguely. And later 21st-century artists like– David Altmejd, and Daniel Arsham, reinterpreting them through his love for science fiction and anime - the latter most evident in his figurative sculptures of androgynous creatures and his abstract pieces, which illustrate landscapes of xeno-vegetation, and the unknown or other-worlds.
This body of work suggests the essential (if not existential) issues of our times like climate change, throwaway culture, the exponential pace of Type 1 technologies like synthetic biology, quantum Ai, and nano-tech, , and their affect on human physiology and the world's ecosystem. His process of unifying disparate mediums suggests how we are all connected and part of a continuum. The artwork is as tactile as it is evocative and introspective.
He seamlessly joins the biological with the mechanical into sci-fi creatures, artifacts, and god-like entities. One series of works uses found plastic objects, embedded into root systems, examines how technology transforms nature and the body. Does nature reclaim the synthetic detritus? Is it nature vs. humanity, or are we combining, transmuting, or evolving through some novel hybridization?
Ultimately, the work explores the effects on humankind and the world, spotlighting humanity's self-destruction, corporate greed, annihilation, and the potential for salvation.