Power Flower is the first solo exhibition in Paris by Brooklyn based artist Antone Könst, a current H.H. Woolley Scholar at the Fondation des Etats Unis.
The exposition features painted works on canvas and plexiglass, as well as sculptures, and a collaborative performance with saxophonist Jacob Kopcienski, who will play a number of visual scores composed by Antone Konst. ‘Power Flower’ is the result of the artist’s 9 month residency in Paris, and often takes common subjects from the history of French cultural production as its own, particularly those subjects which represent an imaginary engagement with Nature. From unicorns to flowers or the Eiffel Tower, Könst plays with the strength these clichés have when they are plasticized, personalized, and remodeled. The show’s title alludes to the American ideology of ‘Flower Power’ which strove to realign the concept of power with Nature and aesthetics in the 1960s. By inverting the popular slogan, ‘Power Flower’ gives new meaning to the words without changing them; humorously revealing embedded corporate, political, and aesthetic connotations within the original terms, which had over the decades become a more symbolic than literal use of language. Similarly, each original gesture in the exhibition is balanced by the formal refiguring of a visual convention. To invert, color-correct, ‘cut & paste’, warp, or otherwise edit is to revitalize wilting signs. The intention is for the art to work, to be a tool for perceptual recalibration and a way to poetically reconnect to the fundamentals of language and perception. Jacob Kopcienski was born in Rochester, New York, in 1991. He completed his Bachelors of Music Education at Bowling Green State University where he studied saxophone with Dr. John Sampen. He currently is a student at the CRR-Boulogne Billancourt where he studies saxophone with Jean-Michel Goury. His performances have taken him to venues throughout Paris, Bordeaux, Italy, Malaysia, Australia and the United States.