SCULPTURE AND VISIONARY ARCHITECTURE





The premise that we live in a geometric space, is at the center of Kevin Draper’s creative tenor. His visionary architecture lives in the gap between the renderings and the building. Informed by his knowledge of physics, it explores the notion of man in relation to space, force, and its mechanistic creations. His work inspires conversations about human creativity, mind patterns, frames of reference, speed, and motion.
New York City’s landscape provides multiple ways for Draper to feed his vision. Urban Architecture through time is a constant inspiration to the artist, and its history informs his forward-thinking approach to designing. There is a momentum implicit in every project. He often uses photographic images of deconstructed landmarks, as well as his own digital drawings superimposed into the final renderings.
In the conception of the Blimp sculpture project, WWI history meets the future. Created behind the idea of a means of advertising the performances of Satellite Collective, the sculpture is an example of the artist’s fascination with the mechanics of aeronautics. Non-rigid aerostats are being utilized as metaphors both for the forces of nature and for ways to move people. The structure was created using fabric and a metal frame, and was set up across from the Grand Rapids Art Museum. It served as the backdrop for dance recitals generating the choreographic structure as the performers moved around the floating blimp.
Motion in space, disjuncture, and fragmentation are some of the ways we perceive reality. Draper conceives his visions as expansions of architectural thought and as responses to forces, patterns, the improvised, and the accidental.
Kevin Draper (1967) was born in Michigan, USA. After a few years working as a mechanical engineer, he completed a Master’s in Architecture, studied printmaking, and began his trajectory as a multimedia artist. In 2010 he moved to New York City. There, he founded Satellite Collective, a vibrant and innovative community of creatives that has produced award-winning theater productions, films, music recitals, dance performances, and multimedia exhibits.
PHOTOGRAPHS AND SCANS






Kevin Draper is a multimedia artist. Among the media he employs are scans and digital imaging; a technology used in the exploration of our world, and the study of our bodies.
Scanning involves capturing detailed information, and it is invaluable in archeology and art preservation. In his scans, Draper challenges the way we view time and space. Everyday objects are seen from the dimension of a digital void. The motion and light of the scanner preserve things in a suspended state: Time as a function of space, as a point of reference in an infinite geometric continuum.
The work presents digital still-lives of Americana: Toys, food boxes, broken figurines of religious icons like Jesus, or Buddha; as well as folk icons like an Indian chief, and broken ceramic horses. These are the fragments and debris of future antiquity, exploring the psychological perception of an individual’s space.
Draper created these images by placing everyday objects into a scanner. But the process didn’t end there: He also scanned his own body; boxed in by his own volition. The machine illuminates his body, his hands, his feet, and his face. The work of self-observation in the vacuum of a digital dimension. After all, the body holds the passing of time. The artist’s private garden of earthly delights.
Other digital works are iPad drawings. The images are a response to the artist’s urge to create as fast as possible, and they echo the speed of film or the pace of a musical score. Both the frames and the in-between. The sounds and the silences.
They are geometric space distortions and constructivist frames of reference that meet gestural free-hand strokes, cutouts, typography, and negatives of mechanical parts created with spray paint and crayons.
The results capture the unexpected momentum of the creative process: Time as the distance covered; and disjuncture as the point between stop and action.
Kevin Draper (1967) was born in Michigan, USA. After a few years working as a mechanical engineer, he completed a Master’s in Architecture, studied printmaking, and began his trajectory as an artist. In 2010 he moved to New York City. There, he founded Satellite Collective, a vibrant and innovative community of creatives that has produced award-winning theater productions, films, music recitals, dance performances, and multimedia exhibits.





STAGE DESIGN
“As an architect, stage design is my own, personal playground.” – Kevin Draper
From its inception, Kevin Draper is involved in every phase of each project. He writes Libretos and poems that generate the action and choreography. Stories that reimagine mythical love, like the one of Echo and Narcissus in New York City, are set at different points in time.
Informed by his understanding that we live in a geometric world, his stage designs are created taking into account the distortion created by the audience’s point of view. The way humans and objects move in space and their frames of reference are at the hub of Draper’s creative ethos. He understands the mechanics of stage design instinctively: A place that plays a fundamental role in storytelling, transporting the audience into the world of the performance. The designer has mastered the visual context for the unfolding narrative, creating a cohesive visual concept. Draper informs the dynamism of each production incorporating his multimedia creations, and projections. Using his knowledge of lighting, and digital art he crafts his stage designs with photographs of some lesser-known dystopian sites around New York. The result is an ambiance set for the unexpected.
His outstanding contributions come from intertwining a spectrum of disciplines. His is a process of discovery: Where forms are in motion, space is the primordial unit of design. That which moves on stage, and which moves us.
Kevin Draper (1967) was born in Michigan, USA. After a few years working as a mechanical engineer, Draper completed a Master’s in Architecture, studied printmaking, and began his trajectory as a multimedia artist. In 2010 he moved to New York City. There, he founded Satellite Collective, a vibrant and innovative community of creatives that has developed award-winning theater productions, films, music recitals, dance performances, and multimedia exhibits.
Draper is an accomplished stage designer. He was awarded an honorable Citation for his work at the Brooklyn Academy of Music by New York City’s Mayor Eric Adams.