Mikael Kennedy: Shoot The Moon, 2010

At The Chelsea Hotel

14 April - 2 May 2010

“In 2002 I was twenty-three years old. David Lamb and I were leaving the blood bank in Seattle where we went twice a week to make 45 dollars selling our blood…I sold my blood to buy expired Polaroid film where I could find it, and when that didn't work I would steal it... We had no jobs, we had no plan…I told David that this was to be the plan: No plan. I said we'd ‘Shoot The Moon.’ Like in the game of Hearts, you collect all the bad cards you win, you get almost all of them but not all, you lose. So I started collecting my cards in the frame of a Polaroid.”   - Mikael Kennedy

Peter Hay Halpert fine Art is pleased to announce an exhibition of Polaroidphotographs by Mikael Kennedy. The exhibition will open on Wednesday 14 April and close on Sunday 2 May, with a reception for the artist on Wednesday 14 April from 6:00 to 8:00 PM. This will be Mr. Kennedy’s first solo show in New York.

Shoot The Moon consists of a series of 500 Polaroids taken between 1999 and 2009. As he moved about - living and traveling in New England, driving from Massachusetts to Washington, hanging around Portland, Oregon, even eventually flying off to Serbia, and then coming to New York – Kennedy photographed with an almost obsessive intensity. This exhibition represents a selection from the thousands of pictures he took during his wanderings. His passion for photographing his friends and family, the places he encountered, even, in an ongoing series, the birds in the sky, is matched and enabled by his love affair with the Polaroid process itself. The instantaneous nature of the process, the uniqueness of each image, its inherent advantages and limitations, coupled with a particular colour range that is further attenuated when he used expired film, all fueled his desire to explore the possibilities in pushing what he could do with Polaroid photography. 

Kennedy was born in Randolph, Vermont in 1979. He graduated from Hampshire College, where he studied photography before he hit the road. He has published his work extensively, first on a blog and subsequently in a series of very limited run (50-100 copies) zines and books. “I needed a place for all these Polaroids to go,” he says. “I was losing my mind putting them in boxes under my desk.” Both the blog and the zines exist under the rubric “Passport to Trespass.” His most recent books are “The Castle and the Kingdom,” (volume 3 of “Passport to Trespass”); “You’ll Miss Me When I Burn,” (volume 4, the title taken from a Will Oldham song); and “Come Home,” (volume 5).  Since 2006, Kennedy recently has brought this aesthetic to fashion photography, shooting lines and advertisements in Polaroid for top name brands and designers.

Kennedy’s Polaroid photographs have quickly gained recognition. This year they have been exhibited as part of an international Polaroid symposium, “Do I Have to Paint You a Picture,” held in Cardiff, Wales, and he was recently awarded an artists’ residency to work and lecture at The Bakery Collective in Maine.

Shoot The Moon will be on exhibit at suite 524 of The Chelsea Hotel. The Chelsea Hotel has a rich and storied place in the history of the contemporary art scene, having served as the site of early exhibitions for artists as diverse as Robert Mapplethorpe to Elizabeth Peyton, helping to launch their careers. The exhibition will be open every day from 14 April – 2 May. Hours are 12 noon – 8 PM, Mondays thru Saturdays, and 12 noon – 6 PM on Sundays.