adorable!

[olyclimber]

http://www.kentrogowski.com/index.html

[lI1|1!]

A brilliant satire of a post-nuclear American society. Monsters of an American dream turn to nightmare. It is pure Americanist culture, and I love it.

[olyclimber]

Bears, is a series of portraits of the most unusual sort: ordinary teddy bears that have been turned inside out and restuffed. Each animal's appearance is determined by the necessities of the manufacturing process. Simple patterns and devices never meant to be seen are now prominent physical characteristics, giving each one a distinctly quirky personality: their fasteners become eyes, their seams become scars, and their stuffing creeps out in the most unexpected places. Together these images form a topology of strange yet oddly familiar creatures. They are at once hideous yet cuddly, disturbing yet endearing, absurd yet adorable, while offering a metaphor for us all to consider. These bears, which have lived and loved and lost as much as their owners, have suffered and endured through it all. It is by virtue of revealing their inner core might we better understand our own.

[olyclimber]

“Delightfully absurd...”

-Steven Heller, The New York Times

 

I think these photographs might mean happiness. They are made by softness and cotton."

-Nicholas, 3th grade student, PS84 NY

 

If Hannibal Lecter, Martin Margiela and a blind speed freak had a three-way in a Build-A-Bear workshop, these creatures would be their mutant offspring.

-Sarah Verdone, Paper Magazine

 

"130+ years after Thomas Eakins portrayed a group of bloody surgeons removing a tumor from a patient's thigh in The Gross Clinic (oil on canvas), Kent Rogowski turns our emblems of childhood comfort inside out. One of Eakins most famous and successful paintings, The Gross Clinic was rejected by the jury of the 1876 Centennial exhibition as 'unsightly' and eventually sold to a medical school for the paltry sum of $200. Perhaps Mr. Rogowski should sell his pictures to a day care center."

-Alec Soth, photographer

 

“Though the subjects of these portraits...aren’t human, they seem to exude as much personality and feeling as any living, breathing thing.”

Jen Trolio, Readymade Magazine

 

"Each of these pieces speaks of another place in the psyche... I wonder how much these pieces have been transformed by the person they stayed with."

-Roger Ballen, photographer

 

"soft and fierce"

-Calvin Tsao, Architect

 

Rife with nostalgia and allusions to consumerism, childhood and sentimentality, among other heady topics, Bears... becomes a meditation on its subject.

-Ami Kealoha, Cool Hunting

 

“Mr Rogowski has become the Damien Hirst of the toy cupboard...”

Brian Sibley, Writer

 

“Part scientist, part sorcerer, Rogowski re-animates the bears as haunting reminders of childhood’s complexities.”

-Blyth Sheldon, V Magazine

 

"Bears is a strange book... Kent Rogowski and powerHouse Books have combined to create what might be the nightmare of any child under eight."

-Andrew Kozma, Arts Houston

 

"downright terrifying.”

-Gwynne Watkins, Babble

[hafilax]

These guys are not as profound but a whole lot cuter

 

[archenemy]

I like the blue one without legs