Kendall Henderson: Time Frames

81 Leonard Gallery is pleased to present Time Frames, the first solo exhibition of New York-based artist Kendall Henderson. On view from October 5th through November 25th, 2023, the exhibition features wall-mounted sculptural work made using an amalgam of collected materials cast in epoxy resin, manipulated and composed in abstract compositions that reframe the manufactured meaning of objects.

Travel tickets, time-stamped receipts, packaging collateral, and ephemera offer both familiarity and discovery. At first glance, one might notice a fragment of a recognizable word; the next, a ticket obscured by currency or a match laid parallel to the transparent frame, in which two flies are preserved in conversation. Objects are grouped according to an indecipherable system, as if weighing aesthetic concern with legibility. Color, form, and movement are weighed against material culture, personal context, and perceived value. Having spent the last 11 years working in design, Henderson takes a particular interest in objects designed to be discarded—materials that at one point function as proof of identity or record of experience but lose their significance in an instant upon fulfilling their purpose. Folded, layered, and suspended in transparency, their power is revived, removed, or reinvented.

The hand-held scale of Henderson’s Fixtures, comprised of elements ranging from miniature to small, affirms each work’s wholeness as a new object itself. This process of transformation from part to whole is illustrated in the Compiled series, which makes use of framed negative space to introduce new compositional elements to be added, shifted, and removed by the artist over the duration of the exhibition. Reflective surfaces across much of the work create an ever changing environment, further countering the fixed quality of resin. Staticity and dynamism work in tandem, presenting a poetic investigation of material, abstraction, and time.

Kendall Henderson (b. 1989) is a New York-based artist born in Colorado and raised in Birmingham, Alabama. Working primarily with collected materials cast in epoxy resin, his practice looks to objects of life’s debris as devices for contemplating manufactured perception. He holds a BFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design.