Series

The List

Hear about upcoming shows. We aim not to send more than one update per week.

About

Connect

hello@heronarts.com
7 Heron St, SF CA

Hours and appointments vary by exhibition, please check the specific event listing.

Exhibition Series

Rotationships

Augustine Kofie

Opening March 12th 7-10pm
Appointments through April 9th

RSVP on Facebook Buy Fluoro Rotation Print Request Appointment

ROTATIONSHIPS is Augustine Kofie stripped down to the essence of his practice. Created over three years, the series reflects the artist’s long-standing interest in salvaging forgotten remnants of the past and elevating them by repurposing them with a futuristic aesthetic. For years, the artist has obsessively collected, archived, and repurposed pressboard, a heavy, multi-ply paper stock used in packaging and office supplies from the 1950s to the 1980s. Previously, pressboard has appeared as the hidden architecture in Kofie’s collages, subsequently covered with layers of paint, ink, and spray. In ROTATIONSHIPS, the only “paint” used is the colored pressboard itself; brushes only apply adhesive and varnish.

Even when painting, Kofie describes his process as one of building. In this series, construction is centered on a series of “rotationships,” a word the artist coined to describe his ongoing relationship with circular forms. The circular forms represent the feminine ideal in his work, taming and controlling more hard-edged, angular elements. Here, circles are everything—centered, interlinked, stretched into oblongs, layered transparencies—all in different explorations of union.

Kofie’s respect for pressboard stems from its durability, malleability, and shelf appeal: it can be scored, folded, coated, screen-printed, embossed, while retaining its structural integrity. Steno notepads, file folders, album covers, industrial packaging—pressboard often packages old technologies from a predigital, bygone era. The artist has sourced this modest refuse of the past at estate sales in the greater Los Angeles area (as well as flea markets all over the world over), from the homes, workshops, and garages of the elderly, who saved everything, when things were made to last.

A self-defined “compartamentalizer,” Kofie breaks his work process into phases. In his studio, the pressboard has been meticulously inventoried—archived by color palette, thickness, and category in vintage industrial file cabinets, “sometimes for years, sometimes for that day,” until they make their way into an assemblage. The blank file folders he screen-prints himself, making his own packaging by silk-screening salvaged security envelope patterns and other half tones onto the pressboard. Using found metal circles (also sourced at estate sales) as templates and found metal objects as weights, the only contemporary material is the wood panel support.

Production is a meditative, intuitive, embodied process. Beginning with a simple pencil sketch on wood panel—a few circles, a few crosscutting lines—Kofie then lets the given selection of pressboard guide the work, manually cutting the pieces, one by one, fitting them into a section, letting each determine the one to follow. The results are reminiscent of mandalas in the way they focus our attention, calm our spirit, and center us in an abstract space, but here these are built out of the industrial arts of our recent, collective past. Even as we enjoy the perfect symmetries, we try to read the images, to decipher the past lives of what we see. In this way, ROTATIONSHIPS is the ultimate manifestation of Kofie’s career-long commitment to salvaging the past and building a future.

Works

4gold on off-white halfone, 2020
Augustine Kofie
Found pressboard & serigraph on cradled birch panel; finished in archival varnish and satin varnish; strip framed in dark wood
48 x 48 x 1 ¾”
$9,200Inquire

7stack on red, 2019
Augustine Kofie
Found pressboard on cradled birch panel; finished in archival varnish and satin varnish; strip framed in dark wood
48 x 48 x 1 ¾”
$9,200Inquire

3link keepdrafting, 2019 (with or without legs)
Augustine Kofie
Found pressboard collage panel on found drafting table; finished in archival varnish and satin varnish; strip framed in found yardsticks and original aluminum siding
Panel 31 x 42, table legs 32 x 28 x 22
$7,000•

4link on teal, 2022
Augustine Kofie
Found pressboard & serigraph on cradled birch panel; finished in archival varnish and satin varnish; strip framed in dark wood
42 x 38 x 1 ¾”
$6,500Inquire

4stack on seafoam, 2019
Augustine Kofie
Found pressboard & serigraph on cradled birch panel; finished in archival varnish and satin varnish; strip framed in dark wood
42 x 38 x 1 ¾”
$6,500Inquire

3link on split halftone, 2022
Augustine Kofie
Found pressboard & serigraph on cradled birch panel; finished in archival varnish and satin varnish; strip framed in dark wood
28 x 37 x 1 ¾”
$4,600•

3link on black, 2022
Augustine Kofie
Found pressboard & serigraph on cradled birch panel; finished in archival varnish and satin varnish; strip framed in dark wood
28 x 37 x 1 ¾”
$4,600•

orange and yellow on black, 2019
Augustine Kofie
Found pressboard & serigraph on cradled birch panel; finished in archival varnish and satin varnish; strip framed in dark wood
28 x 37 x 1 ¾”
$4,600Inquire

3stack orange on halftone, 2022
Augustine Kofie
Found pressboard & serigraph on cradled birch panel; finished in archival varnish and satin varnish; strip framed in dark wood
27 x 27 x 1 ¾”
$3,300Inquire

fluoro rotation on halftone, 2019
Augustine Kofie
Found pressboard & serigraph on cradled birch panel; finished in archival varnish and satin varnish; strip framed in dark wood
27 x 27 x 1 ¾”
$3,300•

2stack on green, 2018
Augustine Kofie
Found pressboard on cradled birch panel; finished in archival varnish and satin varnish; strip framed in dark wood
18 x 40 x 1 ¾”
$3,100•

2stack on ochre, 2018
Augustine Kofie
Found pressboard & serigraph on cradled birch panel; finished in archival varnish and satin varnish; strip framed in dark wood
18 x 40 x 1 ¾”
$3,100•

wonder rotation on offwhite, 2022
Augustine Kofie
Found pressboard & serigraph on cradled birch panel; finished in archival varnish and satin varnish; strip framed in dark wood
12 x 12 x 1 ¾”
$700•

trueblue rotation on teal, 2022
Augustine Kofie
Found pressboard & serigraph on cradled birch panel; finished in archival varnish and satin varnish; strip framed in dark wood
12 x 12 x 1 ¾”
$700Inquire

trueblue rotation on linear halftone, 2022
Augustine Kofie
Found pressboard & serigraph on cradled birch panel; finished in archival varnish and satin varnish; strip framed in dark wood
12 x 12 x 1 ¾”
$700•

plum rotation on white halftone, 2022
Augustine Kofie
Found pressboard & serigraph on cradled birch panel; finished in archival varnish and satin varnish; strip framed in dark wood
12 x 12 x 1 ¾”
$700•

orange rotation on split, 2022
Augustine Kofie
Found pressboard & serigraph on cradled birch panel; finished in archival varnish and satin varnish; strip framed in dark wood
12 x 12 x 1 ¾”
$700Inquire

orange rotation on seafoam, 2022
Augustine Kofie
Found pressboard & serigraph on cradled birch panel; finished in archival varnish and satin varnish; strip framed in dark wood
12 x 12 x 1 ¾”
$700•

hotpink rotation on k+e, 2022
Augustine Kofie
Found pressboard & serigraph on cradled birch panel; finished in archival varnish and satin varnish; strip framed in dark wood
12 x 12 x 1 ¾”
$700•

greynature rotation on offwhite, 2022
Augustine Kofie
Found pressboard & serigraph on cradled birch panel; finished in archival varnish and satin varnish; strip framed in dark wood
12 x 12 x 1 ¾”
$700•

ecru rotation on red, 2022
Augustine Kofie
Found pressboard & serigraph on cradled birch panel; finished in archival varnish and satin varnish; strip framed in dark wood
12 x 12 x 1 ¾”
$700•

dayglo rotation on halftone, 2022
Augustine Kofie
Found pressboard & serigraph on cradled birch panel; finished in archival varnish and satin varnish; strip framed in dark wood
12 x 12 x 1 ¾”
$700•

chartreuse rotation on crosshatch, 2022
Augustine Kofie
Found pressboard & serigraph on cradled birch panel; finished in archival varnish and satin varnish; strip framed in dark wood
12 x 12 x 1 ¾”
$700•

blush rotation on black, 2022
Augustine Kofie
Found pressboard & serigraph on cradled birch panel; finished in archival varnish and satin varnish; strip framed in dark wood
12 x 12 x 1 ¾”
$700•

Series

Exhibition

Community

Culture