Kelsey Tynik
Kelsey Tynik is a mixed media sculptor whose work wrestles with soft and the hard. Tynik completed her MFA at the University of Connecticut in May 2023.
Tynik has exhibited nationally in New York, Connecticut, Arkansas, Texas and California, most recently at Collar Works and Hesse Flatow in New York and JEFF in Texas. She has been an artist-in-residence at Vermont Studio Center, Mass MoCA and ChaNorth, among others.
Her work has been featured in Artforum, create! Magazine, The Coastal Post and I Like Your Work.
Artist Statement
My sculptures are soft and hard, in struggle and in love. They are squeezed too tightly and pathetically drooping. Colorful puffy fabrics hug, conquer, and tangle with wooden counterparts. Together, the pieces accept or reject one another, humming at different octaves; some yell while others whisper. My sculptures are born out of play, as I call on the intuition I trusted as a child. There is risk involved. A specific fluidity must be maintained for the complex orchestration to thrive.
In my practice, I work and rework the archived bits, knowing that the longer I live with each element, the more I discover its function, in silo or as a group. Assembled, interrupted, ripped, ground up, sewn back together, I work to respect a rightness that emerges within each piece. My sculptures travel in packs because they connect to each other beyond their visual similarities. Once coaxed forth, their shapes and colors work relationally: in chaos and in balance, in tenderness and rigidity. They're all going to the same party.