Gene Kaniecki is an artist specializing in painting, drawing, collages, and sculptures based in Somerset, NJ.

Throughout my life, I found myself appalled by nuclear proliferation, war, pollution, gluttony, hypocrisy, run-amuck religiosity, and straightforward human psychopathy. Fully understanding the danger these maladies pose in the face of the intellectual evolution of humanity, I react through the only means I know, that being— the creation of art.

While it is a widely held belief that artists create art for purely beauty or decoration (as the artist aesthetician), I attempt to use art as means of communicating sociopolitical ideologies, theories, and beliefs (as the aesthetic theorist).

It has been a historical understanding that many artists serve as receiver and antenna; absorbing information, reconstructing and transposing it— and eventually transmitting such information to the multitudes. This approach also serves as a historical record, frequently oblique, yet telling. If the artist is to accomplish this goal, she or he must have an understanding of theories and platforms in the sciences and liberal arts, per se making the artist an aesthetic theorist.

According to R.G. Collingwood’s, ‘The Principles of Art,’ 1938, the artist aesthetician is much different from the artist-philosopher. R.G. Collingwood states that (sic) “In the last generation, and increasingly in the last twenty years, the gulf between these two classes (artist aesthetician and philosopher- aesthetician) has been bridged by the appearance of a third class of aesthetic theorist. Poets, painters, and sculptors who have taken the trouble to train themselves in the philosophy or psychology, or both, and write not with the airs and graces of an essayist— or the condescension of a hierophant, but with the modesty and seriousness of a man contributing to a discussion in which other beside himself are speaking, and out of which he hopes that truths not yet known even to himself will emerge.”

I am chiefly a self-taught artist. Generally— I work in oil paint (traditional painting practices), pen and ink (drawings/illustrations, mixed media collage), and sculpture (usually plaster, concrete, metals, and mixed media), along with other sundry artistic practices.

The art produced is influenced and purposely designed around what I consider to be, “a ‘heterogeneous assemblage’ of assorted artistic ideologies, and discordant creative and imaginative processes.” Influences and schools such as surrealism, dada, neo-dada, fluxis, pop, and abstract expressionism, neo modernism, and more often receive high partiality in the works.

To augment and complement the above stated, I exploit disparate influences of ethnicity and culture. The art is strongly swayed by Chicano, Asian, and European styles of painting and drawing, with a hint of the avant garde; all while supporting a bent insofar towards depicting social and political anxieties.

Often— the work is diffuse with liminal (and occasionally subliminal) images of animals, the grotesque, sexual metaphors, mechanistic and biological images. By manipulating the subject matter in this way, and with the purposeful distortion of figurative images into heteromorphic entities— I feel the viewer can more rapidly educe and excogitate the imagery and messages; at least— that is the goal. This artistic ideology works nicely when one considers my newest group of work, ‘Psychological Machines.’

Manifested within each area of the human psychosomatic (including dystopia) is an underlying psychological or mental rational (these days sometimes referred to as memes); in most cases— these rationales/memes do not follow traditional norms or mores. They become warped, subverted, and infected by numerous forms of stimuli and exogenous forces, many of which remain imperceptible to the recipients; eventually, they become the so-called ‘standards' of daily operation within an individual or total population;’ such as capital punishment, organized religion and its countless substructures, political movements, financial systems, and so forth.

As these irrational ideologies escalate via mimetics and pattern modeling—a type of mental ‘psychological machine’ is born. Often, these so-called “machines” reproduce themselves through cultural indoctrination.

Psychological machines can take on automaton-like characteristics; frequently spinning out of control. Besides— when the psychological machine manifests itself within an esprit de corps, illogical and often perilous activities, such as violence, war, and other misanthropic actions rule the day.

Candidly, I feel these psychological machines have been associated with nearly every human-made calamity that has beleaguered our planet since the appearance of humankind. While we may be hundreds of years from reconciling the impact of such psychological enigma, I believe that recognizing the disorder is the first step towards a cure. Like any abnormality, once the light of recognition shines upon the shadow of disorder— the condition fragments and dissipates. I attempt to cast that light through the process of art-making.

My artwork has been honored by winning numerous awards and has had several articles written concerning its nature. This work has been exhibited in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. If you would like my exhibition history or any other information— please feel free to contact me.