Will Kaplan
Medium: Mixed Media Studio Location: 10-15 48th Avenue - Studio# Floor 1 Phone: 9083770907 Email: willkaplan95@gmail.com Website:: http://cargocollective.com/Willkaplanwritingartist Artist Bio: Writing artist Will Kaplan combines different mediums, techniques, and text to probe boundaries. This New Jersey native grew up exploring highway hemmed nature preserves; tensions between the organic and the human-made manifest in his work. After graduating Skidmore College in 2017, Kaplan has made a new home in Queens, a rich setting in which to explore these themes. The city also sources all of the found objects and collage material, which he mixes with his own printmaking, watercolors, and drawing. His work has appeared in at Spring/Break Art Fair, the New Art Dealers Alliance, and Pete's Candy Store. Kaplan has staged two solo shows: Play and Pause at Local Project (2021) and Remergency at Bob's Gallery (2023). Artist Statement: My creations reflect a broad medium-less definition of "art." As a producer and appreciator of visuals, literature, and music, my process gleans from other media to question the contours of a single form. This fusion approach lends my artwork a synaesthesia and musicality. Using a collagical approach to incorporate printmaking, painting, and text, I design a sense of narrative which viewers can read and interpret differently. Found materials feature in my work to literally channel my surroundings. I source pictures and objects, and wood for relief prints from dumpsters and streets. This habit began out of economic necessity, and I revel in the fact that these materials are free to all. A range of textures and imagery nettle framed binaries, including the natural and human-made, presence and absence, personal and political, and gender. Through unexpected aesthetic juxtapositions, I both depict and critique our visually saturated world. By meshing printmaking methods, collage, drawing, and writing, I manipulate fixed elements to suggest individual and collective responses to the power structures which shape our daily lives. With emphasis on art as a mystical, transformative experience. I require it to be borderless, and adaptable to its surroundings and confines. I believe in art as an activity for all, as well as a means of articulation, unification, and understanding. All images and text copyright Will Kaplan