“With Respect To The Killer In My Heart”
Machines, Landscapes, and Evidentiary Photographs
MAY 8 – 18, 2025, 101 READE ST., TRIBECA, NY
“I am focused on the breakdown of Modernism as a language. Brutalism has emerged as the style of the past that fits best now.” says Draper. “These pieces are from a distressingly near future dominated by force.”
Draper’s conception of space is never far from motion and structures that shape it. “With Respect To The Killer In My Heart” features a mechanized sculpture, building structures, and evidentiary photographs integrated in the crafting of his Brutalist narrative. “Dominant Landscape A and B” are large landscapes, hand printed on fabric up to twenty-two feet long which run the length of the gallery and show the passing of time through textures of urban decay, motion, and sudden stops. “Delta,” a handcrafted superbike, is a mechanical expression of the American id in aluminum. “A and B,” a set of sculptural figures with internally visible video and a soundtrack by Stelth Ulvang of The Lumineers, is a vision of dissolving in concert. “Scans of a Bomb Site” is a series of manipulated photographic works that catch pieces of the human body, toys, animals and, seemingly, the tragic scattered objects of a bombing site. The objects and images create a sense of perpetual transformation at speed.
FILM COLLABORATIONS AT “SUMMER BLOCKBUSTERZ” CANADA GALLERY
A suite of animated shorts by written by Kevin Draper and filmmaker Lora Roberson, animated and scored with original music by Brooklyn composers, and and premiered in Satellite Collective ballets.
AUGUST 7 / 2024
SATELLITE TRIBECA
An arts spectacle.
MAY 9 – 22 / 2024
Live music, dance, film, spoken word and visual artists Kevin Draper and Lora Robertson. Two weeks in Tribeca, May 9 – 21/2024. Satellite Collective presents Satellite Tribeca, 101 Reade St., Tribeca, New York
Satellite brings the athletic performance of their performing arts into a gallery space and brings along two giant mascot blimps.
newyork CITY
{ infrastructure is social class }
New Work in collaboration with Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark
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Announcing a new, ongoing collaboration with Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark to explore ways of bringing Matta-Clark’s vision into contemporary art environments and alternate mediums like ballet, site specific sculpture, and visionary architectural environments. Kevin Draper is working with Gordon Matta-Clark ink drawings, creating fresh works that bring Matta-Clark’s 1970’s New York visions into dialogue with current visionary architecture.
New Work in collaboration with Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark
Matta-Clark’s ink and wash drawings are sampled, combined, and reconstructed in digital 3D spaces and then projected at cinematic scale to create intense visual environments. Draper works with a curated set of Gordon Matta-Clark’s drawings – outside of the main body, ink washes and early geometric combinations. Draper brings his unique vision of space, and the consumption of images and meaning over time – a futuristic architecture of void and gravity.
The result is a “recombinant” work, providing a three dimensional world around the original flat works and introducing space and time as modern constructs, a matrix on which Matta-Clark’s works are mirrored and multiplied, and sized up to architectural scale. In this way, live performers can be integrated into the ink drawings in a theatrically sized space.
Large Scale Projection built from 3D models that bring vintage Gordon Matta-Clark drawings into dialogue with modern visionary architecture.
The experience is one of seeing a New York from two different decades fifty years apart, churning, breaking down order, and mingling to form a very recognizable New York setting, but one hard to place in time.
3D SPACE AND MODEL
3D Models bring 2D “samples” into a virtual space and dialogue with each other, and with proposed gravity and structure.
Working with the Gordon Matta-Clark Estate to explore ways of bringing Matta Clark’s vision to life in alternate mediums like the performing arts. Images are large scale projections developed from Gordon Matta-Clark’s energetic arrow drawings.
NEW INFRASTRUCTURE RESEARCH
A time-based study of infrastructure decay and the different impacts experienced by social groups.
“ROCKAWAY – PUERTO RICO”
A time-based study of infrastructure decay and the different impacts experienced by social groups.
LIAR LEAR KING
A Ballet & Animated Film
a collaboration with Lora Robertson and Grand Rapids Ballet
Premiered Oct/2022, Grand Rapids Ballet
“LIAR LEAR KING” is a multi-stage, multi-form work directly facing the impact of narcissism and bullying on our society. It fuses dance, short film, visual art, live music, opera, and spoken word into an experience centered by image and movement, and driven by story.
Credits/ story by Kevin Draper with writing team Tamar Charney, Nikhil Melnechuk, Lora Robertson, and Stelth Ulvang; production by Kevin Draper; score by Brooklyn composer Ellis Ludwig-Leone; Commissioned and premiered by Grand Rapids Ballet
SAD BLIMP & SAD BLIMP ROCKET
A Featured Public Project of Satellite Collective with Kevin Draper and Lora Robertson. Twin Installation at Rosa Parks Circle and Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum Waterfront
Premiered and flown Sep-Oct/2022, Rosa Parks Circle, a Maya Lin Monument & Ah-Nab-Awen Park, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, Commissioned by ArtPrize as a Featured Public Project.
SAD BLIMP is a multi stage project that begins with near ground installations of 40-50 feet aerostats acting as both sculpture, video screen and media hub. Draper’s creative and engineering abilities are tasked as he designs the machine, tower, and control structures together with a team of aerodynamic engineers from the University of Michigan.
Credits/ Design and Engineering by Kevin Draper, with engineering team X, X, X.
Animated Film
A Satellite Rogue Film Collaboration with Lora Robertson
Premiere: Sep/2022, Rosa Parks Circle / Grand Rapids Art Museum Plaza
This film is number six in a series of collaborations with filmmaker Lora Robertson, Brooklyn composer Ellis Ludwig-Leone, Stelth Ulvang of The Lumineers, and Aaron Severini. These films have grown in complexity and serve as the creative core of larger performance pieces. Kevin Draper has produced the films independently, until recently joining with Lora Robertson as Co-Producer.
Credits/ story by Kevin Draper with writing team Tamar Charney, Nikhil Melnechuk, Lora Robertson, and Stelth Ulvang; production by Kevin Draper; score by Brooklyn producer BAILE inspired by works of Ellis Ludwig-Leone
Sad Blimp
at Ah-Nab-Awen Park, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum
Premiered and flown Sep-Oct/2022, Ah-Nab-Awen Park, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, Commissioned by ArtPrize for Satellite Collective with artists Kevin Draper and Lora Robertson as a Featured Public Project.
Credits/
