KEVIN COBB

MFA, Columbia University, New York, NY |  2023

BFA, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD |  2016

Ekstasis (solo), 81 Leonard Gallery, New York, NY |  2025

Scrying, Naruki Art Dojo, New York, NY |  2024

The Artists are In, Hercules Studio Art Program, New York, NY |  2023

What’s New in Still Life, Portrait, and Landscape, Laisun Keane, Boston, MA |  2023

Momentum: Imagining Social Justice Art Exhibit, Brown University Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America, Providence, RI |  2023

Kevin Cobb (b. 1994) is a painter, sculptor, printmaker, and digital artist. He earned his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and his MFA from Columbia University, where he graduated in 2023. Cobb keeps a studio in Manhattan through the competitive Hercules Art Studio Program. His work can be found on Instagram at @forprophet.

“My art is concerned with perspective, framing, and illusion, as well as the nature of observation as it relates to self-consciousness, spiritual self-realization, and surveillance. My fascination with the spherical perspective and the first person point of view grew from my engagement with religion, spirituality and mindfulness, as they serve as perspectival motifs for holism and rootedness in the present, like a more 3-dimensional form of a dot within a circle. By sharing a representation of my literal perspective I establish an empathetic link with the viewer’s mind and also remind them of their own subjectivity.

I feel that my role as an artist is to demonstrate what it is like to see from my unique point of view, and to better articulate, deepen, and broaden the experience I share over time to inspire others to better articulate, deepen, and broaden their unique points of view.

Often, in ways particularly potent today, I feel compelled to process myself through external models of myself generated by the surveilling, algorithmic logic of the internet, market, and popular culture, deeply embedded in my mind like a new type of SuperEgo, or a cyber double-consciousness. My visual style is likely influenced by my screen-laden life, at once aware of myself, the frame of the screen that distinguishes a game or show from the surrounding context, and the viewpoint of the game avatar or protagonist. I think technology can be a powerful tool for expanding one’s viewpoint beyond what is otherwise possible, which is why I incorporate it significantly in parts of my art practice.” – Kevin Cobb