One Work: Kevin Vincent
Growth, 2021, wood and rope, 8 x 9 ft., photo: KOCT Television.
[Image description: An installation in a gallery with white walls and gray tile floor. A tree trunk, appearing to grow from the floor, bends to the right. Thin branches extend from the trunk. Strands of tan-colored rope drape down from the branches.]
Artist Kevin Vincent is both a sculptor of natural materials and a man in touch with societal discourse. He draws inspiration from his time spent outdoors, where he collects discarded matter such as ripped-up shrubs and fallen trees. Vincent uses these materials to craft sculptures that simultaneously evoke a sense of innocence and the legacy of slavery in America. Growth, a work recently exhibited at the Oceanside Museum of Art, aptly harnesses years worth of process with wood and rope, and the charge of historical context they carry.
Growth features a reconstructed tree, eight feet tall and nine feet wide. Its hangs from a discrete, single cable attached to the ceiling, while its flat base stands directly on the floor. Its few branches give life to a cascading curtain of rope that drapes onto the ground. The structure— resembling a weeping willow— is at once playful, stoic, and vulnerable. Above all, it is inviting. Under the overhead lights, it glows with hues of gold, orange, and brown, encouraging the viewer to walk around and under its generous helping of timber and cord. Interactive possibilities are tempting and it is not easy to resist running one’s hand through the draping “leaves.”
It appears as if the rope has naturally germinated from the roots and up through the tree’s torso, emerging around and from its limbs. Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that Vincent has developed a highly methodical process for combining his materials. What comes across as seamless growth is, in fact, quite taxing.
The intense physical labor required to bring two unlikely elements together harmoniously mirrors the real world effort it takes to accept the societal “other,” a matter Vincent has considered continuously on his personal journey of self-reflection. As a Black man handling the rope, he is able to address the fear of lynchings and contemplate a larger history of bondage. He uses the physicality of sculpting this work as a means of catharsis. By suspending his materials with studied precision, he chooses to depict balance and integration. While wood and rope are materials that can harm and instill fear, they can also support, strengthen, and protect.
Vincent exhibits courage in his assemblage of the natural and biographical; he created Growth to directly address historical trauma for people of color. The work might be seen as a stand-in for a body that has persevered. A body that has transformed. A body with a childhood memory of happily swinging from the branches of a tree. A body that was brutally and unjustly murdered. In this work, Vincent allows nature and historical memory to encourage an evolved way of being for himself and others. This ability to reconstruct and reconcile internal and societal life lies in all of us, and Growth is an example of what it means to endure.
— Marcos Duran, artist and choreographer. Duran was a participant in the 2021 HereIn Writers Workshop.
Growth, 2021, wood and rope, 8 x 9 ft., photo: KOCT Television.
[Image description: The same installation, photographed from a different angle, the tree trunk obscured behind the rope. Another sculpture— part of a tree wrapped in rope— is visible sitting on the floor in the right corner of the gallery.]
Growth (detail), 2021, wood and rope, 8 x 9 ft., photo: KOCT Television.
[Image description: A close-up of the curtain of thin, wavy rope tied to the tree’s branches.]
Growth (detail), 2021, wood and rope, 8 x 9 ft., photo: Marcos Duran.
[Image description: A close-up of a tuft of rope emerging from the tree’s trunk.]
Growth (detail), 2021, wood and rope, 8 x 9 ft., photo: Marcos Duran.
[Image description: A close-up of thicker rope wrapped around the top of the tree trunk, binding the thin branches to the trunk.]
Growth (detail), 2021, wood and rope, 8 x 9 ft., photo: Marcos Duran.
[Image description: The ends of the rope resting on the gray floor. Overhead lighting creates intricate shadows on the tile.]