David Ford
An avid world traveler, David Ford’s expansive experiences define his selftaught art practice, manifesting in many forms and functioning in what he describes as “multiple dimensions.” Reflecting a continuum of engagement, all aspects of his life experience are seemingly infused with, and inextricable from, his art.
Ford’s work—including paintings and a range of performance and action-based work (infinite maquettes, protein sculptures, and civic performances)— incorporates political, social, cultural, and economic aspects and strives for an expression beyond a single self, time, place, or set of ideas. His otherworldly acrylic on canvas painting I’m Ready (2005), for example, images one’s willing embodiment of the “other”—divergent belief systems, cultures, ideologies—symbolizing a syncretic quest for broader understanding of being.
Simultaneously invoking the guttural and sublime, Ford’s philosophical approach to life and art balances and reveals inherent paradox. Constantly playing with dualities— serenity/fear, beauty/ugliness, occident/ orient—he provokes questions and insinuates persuasive suggestions without providing concrete answers. His work begs for a new middle ground where reconciliations of the most extreme oppositions are achieved.
Bonus Kill (2001) portrays the passionate link between love and violence. Current political and societal crises—found, for example, in his paintings God’s Will Over Man and Welcome (both 2005), each referencing terrorism in drastically different manners—are ironically conjoined with invocations of classical art, decoration, and landscape tainted by age and rot, a conceptual stylistic trait Ford refers to as “pop-decay.”2
Having lived in the Mayan area of Mexico, Ford is drawn to indigenous culture and examines its absorption by colonialism in his work. An inspired activist, Ford also acknowledges William Burroughs, John Cage, and Merce Cunningham as important creative influences. Ongoing projects, such as the living protein sculpture/altarpiece San Simone (Maximone), honoring the patron saint of bad habits, meld strategy and spontaneity in highly anticipated, immersive public performances that stretch notions of what art can do and be.
Ford’s dynamic involvement in the art scene for the past twenty years has earned him recognition as an extraordinary creative force in Kansas City, and beyond. Whether at YJ’s Third World Snackbar on Eighteenth
Street (a local bastion of cultural exchange that Ford owns and operates), amidst his performances and exhibitions, or currently, in his studio at Review Studios in Kansas City, David Ford inspires the creative spirit in those he touches.
—Heather Lustfeldt
David Ford’s artist page from CSF’s “10″ (PDF)
To view David Ford’s website, click here.
