Possibly influenced by Jack Kerouac’s “Desolation Angels” and John Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row,” Bob Dylan’s 1965 song “Desolation Row” features a surreal parade of Fellini-esque characters and vignettes that suggest the disordered urban chaos of America in the mid-60s.
At over eleven minutes in length, the song’s opening lines, “They’re selling postcards of the hanging” and “the circus is in town,” reference Dylan’s father’s memories as an eight-year-old of a lynching in Duluth. Three black men employed by a traveling circus were accused of raping a white woman, and on June 15, 1920, they were taken from custody and hanged, with photos of the lynching later sold as postcards.
Featuring a blind beggar, a one-eyed undertaker, literary characters (T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound), biblical characters (Noah, the good Samaritan, Cain, and Abel), historical characters (Einstein and Nero), fictional characters (Cinderella, Romeo, and Ophelia), and many more, “Desolation Row” provides rich and complex imagery and has been the inspiration for local artist Marcus Kenney’s solo show of the same name, currently on display at Laney Contemporary.
I meet Kenney (b. 1972) in his storefront studio on Waters Avenue where he is in the final push of preparing over fifty large-scale oil paintings inspired by the song he has always loved. “Every time I would hear it, I would have these visuals in my head.” With all the work created during the past three years, he began the project in early 2020 during COVID.
A native of rural Cooter Point, Louisiana, Kenney came to Savannah in 1994, earned an MFA in Photography from SCAD in 1999, and subsequently built a practice of photography, collage, mixed media installations, taxidermy, and neon sculpture. He has shown in New York, London, Miami, Hong Kong, Paris, and more, and is collected nationally and internationally. This is his first solo show in Savannah in five years.
“Painting was always something I wanted to do but was afraid to do,” he confides. “I went to Europe last summer and went to the Vatican and Uffizi and other major museums and saw so many oil paintings that it made me think about my own body of work. I’m getting to the age now where I’m starting to think about my own legacy and how maybe I should start using a medium that’s got longevity.”
Kenney says he gets a little tired of the other mediums he has explored in his career: “The fun part for me has gone. I love teaching myself new things, and so it’s been enjoyable learning the process of oil painting for the first time.” After graduating from SCAD, he started “doing collage to teach myself to paint because all my friends were painters, but it was just something I was always terrified of. I think having that time during COVID was a gift. I had all my kids at home; I didn’t have any commissions or shows.” The pandemic provided the opportunity to learn the new medium of oil painting and to put together a huge new body of work, “all done with this song in mind.”
He is excited but slightly nervous to mount the show. “I’m not a trained painter, but I am a trained artist, and I know how to create things that are interesting for people to look at.” Painting is far from his comfort zone, “even though compositionally and in subject matter, they are similar to my collage works. It’s been enjoyable to create them. There have been so many discoveries – just even learning how to mix paint!”
Kenney had a solo show at Laney Contemporary five years ago and a solo show “Topics in American History” at the Jepson Center in 2007. “I always want to give people something new. My heroes are people like David Bowie. Every album has a different style, a different sound, even though we all know it’s David Bowie. Or Prince’s influential album “Purple Rain”… His next album “Around the World in a Day” was completely different, even though it would have been so easy to pick up right where he left off.” Similarly, he says it would have been easy for him to do another neon show, “but I’ve already cracked that code and want to try new things.”
We discuss how sticking with what has proven commercially successful as an artist takes a toll on creativity. “And I could have easily done that. Years ago, I was established as a collage artist, and when I showed Marcia Wood (a gallerist in Atlanta) new taxidermy stuff, she was hesitant to introduce it. But I love the idea of just pushing yourself to find new ways to speak.”
Kenney continues, “I’ve really enjoyed painting and look forward to coming to the studio every morning. Having the song to encapsulate what I’m doing has kept me focused, and then doing what I’ve always done by incorporating a contemporary ethos. I’m using the line “the circus is in town” as a metaphor for our culture.” Some of the paintings allude to current political and racial tensions and the BLM movement. Be sure not to miss the video-based sculptural installation in the mirrored gallery, an amalgamation of works in the exhibition presented in a way that references Kenney’s earlier works…He ponders, “What do we do with history? How do we reframe it?”
When Kenney first came to Savannah, he had jobs selling cemetery plots and getting up at six in the morning to clean the stalls at Wicklow Stables. “In Louisiana, I worked in a catfish plant filleting catfish on the night shift. I’ve worked at an Exxon plant. I’ve had some real shitty jobs, so I knew if I was going to be an artist, I’d have to get serious.” Besides earning his MFA, one of the smart things he did was run a gallery because “it got people to know who I was.”
He continues, “We had some great shows: Monica Cook, Michael Scoggins, Summer Wheat, so many artists who have done so well. Back then, it felt like everything was possible.” He reminisces about renting a 25,000 square foot studio on Broughton(!) “But Savannah is so expensive now, and artists can’t really afford to live here anymore if they’re straight out of art school. Where are they going to work?”
This period of the early 2000s is when I first met Kenney, and I express my deep gratitude for his vision in bringing First Fridays to Starland. I am also grateful for his work with young local investors and SCAD graduates Greg Jacobs and John Deaderick, who were trying to prevent the destruction of properties in the area of 41st and Bull. Furthermore, I commend him for his curation of over thirty shows at Gallery 28, the first property they revitalized on the corner of 41st and Drayton. “We did shows in the warehouse across the street and then all over downtown. The new Savannah has no idea about all that,” he says.
Although he does not have an official relationship with SCAD, he feels like an ambassador for the school. “They’ve been so supportive of me in my career. In a way, their patronage is like what the churches did for artists during the Renaissance. Artists need somebody to be able to keep on going. Savannah has a very small base of collectors; those people probably have more Marcus Kenneys than they want – and I’m very grateful for that, but SCAD has kept me going by buying my work and commissioning me to create things on different campuses.”
Although he and his wife Sarah talk about eventually having a place in the country, Savannah is home now. “I became who I am here. This is my town.”
Come and support this artist who has shaped and supported the art scene in his town for so long.
The opening reception for “Desolation Row,” featuring special guests and video installations on the lawn is on Friday, April 14, from 7 to 10 pm. Presentations include video installations by Atlanta artists George Long and Mike Stasny, John Collette, Kevin Kirkwood, Michael Mikulec, Jameid Ferrin as well as a DJ set by Extremely Michael and Sloppy George. Charles Schwab of Offal Labs and Dumpster Edition will be live-printing unique Marcus Kenney designed t-shirts which will be available for purchase. There will also be Tarot readings by Dame Darcy and acoustic guitar by Stewart Marshall. Nom Nom Poké food truck will be on premises.Laney Contemporary is located at 1810 Mills B. Lane Blvd., and the work hangs from April 4 through June 10. Find out more about Marcus Kenney at marcuskenney.com and follow him on Instagram @marcuskenneysparade.His work is represented by SCAD Art Sales, Florida Mining Gallery in Jacksonville, FL, Marcia Wood Gallery in Atlanta, TFA Fine Art Advisory in Charlotte, NC, and of course by Laney Contemporary.
This article appears in Apr 1-30, 2023.