Notes From The City: An Abundant Life

The first time I saw Gene Kiegel's work, I was at Mana Contemporary for an Open House. Those days are always great days - it's a wonderful experience to wander through the different floors and explore different studios. There's so much that is interesting and beautiful, and over time as I have met more Artists who are part of the community, I run into people I know and visit their studios and those of friends. But the first time I saw Gene Kiegel's work I was awe struck. I didn't know him personally, and now that I have met him and shared time with him I was able to tell him that I was extremely impressed not only with the beauty and high quality of the work he was doing, but with the way his studio looked - it was like a museum or a gallery more than an Artist's studio, though there were areas where you could see some of the tools of the Artist's process, but that only made it all the more impressive because the tools Gene Kiegel is using are not the types of tools you usually see. Gene is working primarily with beeswax, melting and layering it, applying different temperatures and incorporating other substances such as resin and pigments and burnt paper and graphite, creating textures through a process that creates a living sculpture. His work will have the possibility of changing somewhat over time because of the medium - it is nature in its purest form, and the dialogue between art and nature that a viewer can find in his work is truly beautiful and astonishing.

A few weeks ago I was at an event at Guy Regal's design showroom at 200 Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. It was a designer's discussion that was part of NYC X Design, and when I went to take my seat and looked around the room, I saw to the left of me some paintings that I thought I recognized. The showroom was full of vintage pieces and antiques, and so at first I thought it must be the work of an Artist from another time, but when I looked at the name cards beneath the pieces I saw the name Gene Kiegel. The work looked so perfect in the showroom, and it was definitely inspiring as an addition to a room full of stunning interior design pieces, and so I took a photograph and posted it on Instagram. When Gene saw the tag and thanked me for posting it, I responded about how much I enjoyed seeing his work there and that I would love to come for a visit for a blog post. He replied with a yes and made time for us to meet, and so I found myself in his studio on a lovely spring afternoon, sipping a glass of freshly brewed turmeric chai, and learning more about the process that had so taken my breath away the first time I saw it.

Over time Gene has continued to explore the possible worlds that can be created through the use of beeswax, creating sub-series of his "Another World" series with the descriptive titles Landscapes, Igneous Matter, Fossils, Origins and Shelters, and he has begun to work with the beeswax in sculptural form off of the canvas. There is a power to Gene's work that is almost indescribable - it would seem with the fragility of the beeswax and it's malleability and changeability that it would be a simply beautiful but very delicate presence, but instead something happens in the hands of the Artist that creates something that has a life force and secret language all its own. The canvases seem to speak to us in some way that is understood on a very deep level, and Gene describes how he wants to find a universal language in the work and pieces he creates that will cross boundaries of understanding and bring us back to our origins. Some of the pieces have somewhat identifiable shapes and textures reminiscent of things such as coral or lava, but others have only their own life and form as a point of reference. But it is that life and form that flows through them that speak to us all so clearly and reminds us of hidden codes locked in our memory banks that have been waiting to be allowed to be free to roam.

As I began to take photographs, Gene, who is also a professional photographer, took my camera and pressed it closely against one of his larger sculptural installations. A glass top covered over the landscape that in this piece was horizontal in the way that a table top would be positioned. I told Gene that if I had that piece in my own home I would use it as a table, protecting the glass top carefully while enjoying the opportunity to sit and study the shapes that rise from the landscape below. As he showed me the way the landscape reflected off the glass, I had been trying to photographs it, and when he took the camera and pressed it against the side, I could see the dramatic view come to life that he had been trying to help me find a way to photograph. It was as if I had somehow entered another world, one that was partly made up of things that are of this one, but partly all of its own. I thought of underwater worlds, of stalactites and stalagmites in underground caves, and of landscapes in space, on other planets and in the cosmos. As I looked at the reflection through and into the glass and beyond to the piece on the other side of it, I also thought of the worlds within worlds that are found in tiny cells, things the naked eye cannot comprehend but that are all around us adding their beauty and energy to all that we are able to see.

My afternoon with Gene Kiegel was an inspiring one - as I walked out of his studio I felt energized in a way that comes from a truly joyful experience. Originally from Odessa, Ukraine, he received his Bachelor of Arts in Architecture and Environmental Design from UC Berkeley, and has received awards and exhibited his work in Palm Beach, Miami, Fisher Island, New York , Beverly Hills, Dallas, Houston, London, and St. Petersburg, Russia. But somehow on that afternoon in his studio it was as if we had walked together into a new world, and experienced a new landscape, and that now that we had seen it together we had a language to share with the world around us. It is in that language and in that connection to those hidden worlds that we can find our place in our own.

Gene Kiegel

In His Studio At Mana Contemporary

888 Newark Avenue

Jersey City, New Jersey

https://www.genekiegel.com/index