Kevin Francis Gray
Photo: Henrik Sylvest
Kevin Francis Gray, (Armagh, 1972) is a sculptor who studied at the National College Of Art and Design in Dublin (1995), the School of Art Institute in Chicago (1996), and Goldsmiths University in London (1999). He lives and works between London, England and Pietrasanta, Italy.
Italian marble stands as the cornerstone of Kevin Francis Gray’s oeuvre. Inheriting the material’s historic and cultural legacies, as well as evoking its academic canons, the starting point of Gray’s artistic practice could hardly sound more traditional. Materials such as clay, plaster, and marble and techniques including modelling, casting, and carving honour the old-fashioned praxis of manual craft and sculpture. By re-contextualising the classical modus operandi into contemporary productions, Gray celebrates the tradition of sculpture whilst favouring a forward-looking approach. He works to shift the focus from gazing back at art history to the way we look towards its future. For Gray, marble has become the springboard to explore new ventures with the stone. Without leaving behind the artisanal component of the artistic process, he progresses and evolves with it. By exploring its possibilities in terms of colours (white, grey, black, yellow, green, etc.), texture, and shapes, Gray confronts the material's potential with a curious and modern attitude. The artist transcends marble’s innate features of hardness and stillness, defeating its nature and the physicality of the process, succeeding at breathing life into the stone, unearthing shapes and emotions that are buried within the block. Forms trace back to their fluid state, surfaces flow in an alternation of concave and convex movements - they are in a state of becoming. These works further assert Gray as a master of marble as a medium.
