Opening Talk for Craig Deppen Auge: Volumes at Kiosk Gallery

These works reference bookmaking, design, quilting and craft, while exploring myriad possibilities of latent meaning inherent in the collage process.

Artist statement:

Concepts of memory, dreams, inner landscapes, and spiritual time emerge from
personal narrative and ritual, often incorporating elements of chance. As I investigate
the lineage of abstract visual language, new poetic motifs emerge, combining rhythmic
patterns in harmony or dissonance with organic forms and textures. In my work I
explore relationships; the relationship between objects, material, shape, color and markmaking.
These gestures offer both subtle and immediate reflections of my relationship
with others and what we call reality. Nature, phosphene imagery, myth, and urban
decay, as well as the patchwork quilts and makeshift aesthetic of my Appalachian
childhood inspire the work. The repetitive triangle symbolically unifies past, present, and
future; mind, body, and spirit.

In my practice, I think of collage in terms beyond simply a medium or technique. Collage
effectively interprets the hidden or secret, remembrance and revelation. Combining
seemingly unrelated components leads to mysterious, yet familiar expressions of déjà vu.
The very act of layering produces mercurial snapshots that manifest a sense of
time-space continuum; meditations on the tenuous relationship with the present
moment. Art is the evidence of our existence.

Bio:

Originally from Charleston, West Virginia, Craig Deppen Auge is a multimedia artist and
designer currently based in Kansas City, Missouri. He has exhibited work in solo and
group shows throughout the U.S., including The Billboard Creative Q1 Show in Los
Angeles, and locally at Leedy-Voulkos Art Center. He has participated in numerous
collaborative projects, including New York-based Satellite Collective’s Telephone: An
International Arts Experiment. His art has been featured in several print and digital
publications including Art Yellow Book #2, Sprung Formal, Gambling the Aisle, Duende
Literary Journal and Blacklist Journal.