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Kevin Starr, artist/gallery owner
By Scott Lucas
Published 09.05.2007
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Kevin Starr is Charlotte's Andy Warhol. He
is, or has been, an award winning hair stylist, a pianist,
photographer, painter and now -- in his
most recent incarnation -- a Plaza Midwood provocateur.
The Kevin Starr Art Studio is in a cubed
brick building in a sea of asphalt behind the Family Dollar
store on Central Avenue. His studio is one
of the new art emporiums cropping up in various
unexpected dollops of recently ignored
property off the beaten path. He's new breath; always a
good thing.
The artist Kevin Starr is an artist who
brings to mind a blob of mercury floating on a sheet of glass -
- hard not to look at, hard to pin down.
His work careens between high-style fashion photography
and high-impact, guts-laid-bare painting.
His two personalities meld the self conscious stylishness
of fashion with the messy goo of a
painterly emotional blitz -- kind of like Kate Moss on acid. An
unsettling, but temporarily intoxicating,
mix.
The fashion photography looks to me like
it could have jumped off the pages of Vogue or Cosmo.
Dramatic, sometimes feral looking women
pout and often sprout feathers. Tightly-bound torsos in
satin or silk and synthetic, shiny garb
titillate and enrapture the looker. It works OK for me, but
I'll
defer to Tyra.
Starr's paintings are expressionistic,
pure color or near-pure color, combinations of subject matter
dominated by human forms. He includes
man-made forms made organic under the artist's hand.
His forms vibrate in fields of saturated
primary and tertiary hues. And stun on impact. His art is take
your breath away -- either loathing or
exhilaration. Different strokes.
Starr has traveled many roads which have
now led here. He is part of Charlotte. Go see his
paintings, and the paintings of those he
considers worthy, in September. For information go to
kevinsstarrartstudio.com.
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