Kool Koor: From pioneer graffiti writer to the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Deborah Gallin • 1 août 2020

Instinctive, passionate, inquisitive, and an unquenchable aficionado of life's details, Kool Koor's artistic journey began in the South Bronx and continues to "constantly reinvent itself."

Kool Koor: I've always been the type of person who wanted to expand my horizons, to push further, and try to do more and different things. From humble beginnings in the Bronx, I think that I've come quite a way. I'm busy and have a lot more to say artistically. It's important to know that I don't paint every day. I don't draw every day. What I am doing is absorbing movement and sound and light reflection every day.

Right now, I'm in my car in a line of traffic. I'm not just looking at looking at the cars. I'm looking at the buildings, the leaves that are blowing, the reflections of the sunlight on the leaves. All these things become sources of passive information that you absorb. If you're taking the subway when a door opens, a wave of people go in, and a wave of people come out, all different types of colors, shapes and sizes. Some people don't pay attention to it; other people do. Some people walk and only look straight ahead and down. Other people walk and look up. When you look up, you start to see the shapes of the tops of buildings. You see the sky. Your whole perspective of everything changes.
If you want to be analytical about it, you can find patterns and algorithms within everything. And all these sorts of things--the way that the people choose to sit randomly in a public park or a restaurant-- are part of composition, parts of movement. I'll think about a series of works I want to create and prepare 10,12, 20, 30 canvases. I'll select my palette of colors, material, and things like that and lay everything out. I'll say, "This is what I'm going to use. Only. This is what I want to focus on." I like to already think about what I would like to play with. From there, the creative process begins. When I start to paint, it's like an explosion because I've already explored and absorbed. It's like a sponge: when it can't absorb any more, and it can only release! That's when I start to paint. When you're creating an artwork, you are putting your soul, and your heart on the table or on the wall for someone to scrutinize, and you hope that they appreciate it. You hope that it's acceptable.

There's a difference between "painting because if you don't sell your lights are going to turn off" and "painting because you want to paint what you want to paint." I've been in places where I needed to get those lights turned on. I find that even in those moments, I'm not a conformist. If the gallery says, "I need some paintings but no green because I don't like green." The first thing I do is to bring green paintings!
When you're a bit older, a little further in your career, you can sort of choose what you want to do. That's when it's probably even more stressful because you wonder if what you do is going to be relevant. Not so much whether somebody wants to buy it, but whether you are painting something that visually, artistically, historically is going to make a difference tomorrow or the day after tomorrow or the day after that.

I look for a theme for every exhibition. I think for a long time about the concept and the title and what it means; how I would like the shapes distributed inside an exhibition space; the energy that the movement inside of the space is going to create. Then I think about the palette, about the colors I'm going to use, and that's when I start to create.

Usually, people don't understand what I'm doing until a couple of years later. I'll do an exhibition. It may be a beautiful exhibition. I could have 20 paintings hanging, and maybe three will sell, and I think to myself, "What is it that people don't understand?" This exhibition is great. A couple of years later, those paintings start flying out the door. And I think to myself, "What was it two years ago that you didn't get?!"

Contrary to that, in New York, the work that I exhibited went immediately. People gravitated to it, understood it and liked it. That's telling me that I have to explore a little bit deeper, do a solo exhibition, see where that can go.
Deborah Gallin: Are you trying to communicate something with your artwork?
KK: I am. Constantly. It took me many years before my I got my philosophy, or my line of thought, truly clear about what I'm trying to represent. When you're young, you're just trying to express yourself and have fun. That's the first thing that you have to do. After that, you start to get a little bit more academic about your approach, at least I did anyway. For me, it's primarily a source of inspiration for optimism even though early work seems explosive and galactic. It's all a representation of transformation to a better existence. When you see these explosions and gases and bubbles, it's not really a war; it's creation.

 
I was always trying to dig a little bit deeper, to give things a bit more style by encoding a lot of symbolism into the artwork. I think that probably comes from my early days of graffiti when I was doing very stylized calligraphy. It was difficult to read. A lot of artists at that time felt that a Wildstyle tag was a representation of high style or was a super difficult style to attain. I dove into that. Calligraphy became an important part of my artwork and was visible in it for many, many years. What looks like labyrinths are, for me, representations of architecture in my early work.

I wanted to depict another existence happening someplace else…like in another galaxy. A way for me to do that was to build these futuristic metropolises. As the years advanced, those shapes became independent of what was representing the ground or mountains, and they started to float in the artwork. I started to see repetition and decided to make a language of those movements. I ran with it. The shapes repeating themselves evolved into an alphabet that I created. From that alphabet came sound, which I recorded as music speaking that language.
DG: You have an architectural background. Is it something that pushes your thinking outside of yourself and into the larger world somehow?
KK: I have always been intrigued by and drawn to things that were difficult to understand. I found that with architecture, you had the freedom to let your mind run wild to make a three-dimensional object. 

As a young adult, I was drawn to the game of chess. I like the tower or the rook. I wanted to use "Rook" as an artist's name. I thought the idea would be too corny, so I ditched it. I took the K and the R and turned them around. That's how I got my artist's name. It reflects the way I think. If you look at life or things from the other way around, you often can understand them. That's how Koor came about. There was no one else named Koor, so that was good for me.



My first artist's name was The Arbitrator Koor. I called myself The Arbitrator Koor because I felt that in my artwork, I was an arbitrator. The arbitrator between a reality that we know and a reality that is something else. Kool came about later when I started recording music. I wanted a stage name, and I thought, "Kool Koor," and it stayed Kool Koor. 

DG: You're interested in futurism. Is this "arbitrator" between the reality we know and the something else the futuristic part of your process? 
KK: At a certain point, I called the work that I was doing "futuristic symbolism." Not because I was trying to be like a futurist artist following that movement. I felt that my artwork was a window into another dimension, another reality where there was another way of communication through telepathy and the sort of floating shapes that I had in my artwork. 

The work from around 2012 to the present is giving space for those movements, for those primarily architectural elements to twist, interact, or expand randomly and to relate or transmit emotions.
DG: Are there particular emotions that you want or that you hope people will feel when they look at your work?
KK: I think each person gets something out of it: whatever it is you need, you'll find it. My work is mostly perceived as being very positive and calming to people, even the most explosive work. There's something sort of metaphysical going on there. 

I like the idea that I have my story when I'm painting. When I first start an artwork, I empty my head. I try not to think about anything. I concentrate on the contrast between the negative and the positive space on the canvas or on the object that I'm painting. I try to create a tension in the movement. 

After that comes the more academic element where you try to put extra balance and emphasis on particular areas to make the artwork work as an artwork.


I don't use gimmicks or figurative elements from everyday life to make people think about something. I can draw a person; I can look at you, and I can illustrate you in a very realistic manner. But if I were to start doing that, I think that I would not be understood as an artist. People would think I was just jumping on a bandwagon, which is not the case.


At the beginning of this year, I did something special: a series of artwork in my old style. That work is being presented by Belinda Neuman, the daughter of my first art dealer. She has a gallery in New York. They exhibited me in the Scope Art Fair, and it was very well received. I think I'm going to open up a small box inside of my universe where I will paint in my old style for their galleries.

DG: Is that a creative decision or financial decision?

KK: It was a creative decision. The gallery exhibited in Miami one year before. They saw a lot of street art spinning around, and they said, "You were there from the beginning. I think that if anything, you should represent that energy. I think that we have people that will be very responsive to it."



It was a year before I accepted. I didn't want to start doing something just for the sake of money. I thought about it, and I thought of myself as a jazz musician, "If you compose something at the age of 20 at the age of 50, you can still play that song. It's still you. Why not for a painter?! "I did it, and It worked.

DG: When you put it that way, it sounds a little bit like you're trying to pull it off on somebody, you know, "I did it, and it worked."
KK: I didn't want to do it because I like to move forward. I've tried some paintings where I mix the two styles very blatantly. I didn't like it personally even though some people liked them and bought them. I didn't feel like that was being true to myself. 

In this particular case, I went to New York, and I painted a body of work in a gallery in my old neighborhood in the Bronx with spray paint. I just threw myself into that energy. The whole creative process was interesting. I came up with something that I felt good about. I didn't feel that I was cheating myself or playing games or tricking people. I felt like I was really being myself. I also thought about it in terms of music. Because you created something in one year doesn't mean that you cannot play it again. There's no problem with that. It's okay, redo yourself!

DG: For me, redoing myself is taking a big step back and losing something.
KK: This is what I was obsessed with not doing. I was closed-up in a studio, alone, in my old neighborhood, a place I haven't lived in 30 years! It put me in another mind state. Even though it was as much flashback to an older me, it was new! No matter how much you try to put something in the same color palette, the palette of colors is different. The available materials are different. The characteristics of the spray caps are different. The choice of markers for the detailing is different. When you think that it's something representing work from the 1980s and you take a closer look, you see that it's very actual! 

I would say to anybody: don't have doubts about redoing you. No matter how you do it, it's you. There will always be something new. 

DG: There is a quote from CWArt that struck me, "His current work is the fruit of those golden years of exploration. Elegant lines bend, blend and transform, taking the viewer on a never-ending journey within architectural balance and the reflection of light. With the ease of a gentle whisper, Kool Koor lures us closer then sweeps us away to freely wander around inside his magnificent labyrinths." (cwart : Kool Koor). 

I'm curious about "those golden years of exploration." 
KK: That's about the free moving labyrinths I do, which are extrapolations from textual cityscapes painted in metallic oil ink, gold metallic. I use metallic paint markers because they have an extraordinarily high reflective nature to them. Whenever I paint, even from back in the 70s and the early 80s, I use metallic ink so that when you look at the artwork from different angles, the light gives off something different. No matter which perspective you look at it changes. It's like you have many paintings in one. As a function of the temperature of the light or the time of day, one painting will glow orange with reflections and, sometimes, it'll glow in the color of whatever room it may be in.
Kool Koor on cwart

DG: With these golden labyrinths, what are you looking for, what are you exploring?

KK: Movement! Movement & light. 


DG: That's related to the music as well.

KK: Yes, I attribute sound to everything I'm doing. Imagine a two-dimensional representation of something that's three dimensional and that it's in movement. I like the viewer to feel that they're having a snapshot or a still of a movie.


DG: I can understand my eye or me moving through them, but it's more difficult for me to imagine them moving. It's almost like snakes or something. 

KK: For me, when I paint, I imagine everything as a small window of a bigger picture. 


DG: One of the articles I read says «Graffiti connection », « Graffiti writer », l'artiste aérosol KOOL KOOR, est un des plus intéressants représentants du « Tag » de sa génération. ». it was just this weird mix of things for me. In French “tag” is isn't graffiti.

KK: Tag is writing. In the early days, we didn't call ourselves graffiti artists. We called ourselves Writers. Writing was our language. I always say that writing or tagging is a necessary step in developing your style. 


DG: How do you describe your style?

KK: Well, I would say that it is movement. Movement is the one word that encapsulates my work. My work is about searching for, or the expression of movement through time and the interaction of light, trying to find a way to make an artwork that can even ultimately disappear if you look at it from a specific angle. 


I've achieved that with certain works I've been doing using black tone-on-tone. I'm working now in a series of white-on-white, tone-on-tone, paintings. Those types of things intrigue me. Because I spent so many years inside of explosions of color, the exploration within black and white is exciting.



DG: Is it calming? I ask because you talked about "explosions and color," "explosions of color," and "explorations of black-on-black and white-on-white."

KK: I'm not sure that it's calming. I didn't' think about it. I'm not doing it for the sake of being calm. I'm doing it because right now, I'm exploring creating nuances with tonality, particularly with white using flat and brilliant paint, and it's fascinating.


I'm looking forward to finishing this first series. It will be exhibited for the first time in Cannes in the south of France. The gallery exhibition opens on July 21, 2020. The second time work from this series will be shown will be in Brussels at the beginning of September. I am going to dedicate the rest of 2020 in Europe to exploring with these tone-on-tone, primarily white canvases.



When I get back to America (whenever that's going to be), I will continue spray painting in my old style but only using various shades of white & gray. The same concept but with spray paint.

DG: Here, you're doing it with paintbrushes on canvas, and there you'll do it with aerosol on canvas. Why is there a difference?
KK: I accepted to take that journey with that gallery, which has a historical connection for me: my first collector and my first gallery was Dolores Neuman. Her daughter, Belinda, asked me to do work in the old style. I want that gallery to be the exclusive place to get artwork for me made with spray paint.

DG: You talked about wanting your work to be relevant, and I hate to bring this up, but I can't help but bring it up. You're American. Is your black and white work an expression of what is happening in the United States today? And particularly the exploration that you're doing with the white right now?

KK: Subliminally? Obviously, yes. And I'm not even thinking about it. But obviously, the fact that I am doing this now. Everything happens for a very specific reason. Nothing happens before it's supposed to. Everything happens as it's supposed to happen. There's no such thing as a bad move. Everything is positive for some reason or another. 



I've had this idea of doing white artwork for many years, but the moment it didn't present itself. It has now with Coronavirus and this divisiveness that's going on in the States, which is horrific. Here I am bringing out these white paintings  I don't get political with my artwork. I've had a few explicitly political exhibitions. I find that you can be political without being political. It's easy to be political; it's easy just to shock to sell art, or to try to seem like you're relevant in the art world. Some figurative artists do that by nature: like Banksy or Shepard Fairey.



My work has always been abstract. For me to get political would seem, again, like someone jumping on the bandwagon. My last political exhibition was Black Gold. It was bringing to light the different commodities being manufactured or pulled out of the ground in very impoverished areas where the people who were sourcing everything were not necessarily benefiting from the product: be it coffee, chocolate, or coal.



I've done exhibitions where I tried to "enlighten" or to "create awareness about higher states of mind" Like Sanctuary, the show I did last year, which I wanted to repeat this year. I wanted to do four exhibitions, all called Sanctuary, but because of the Coronavirus, the exhibitions have been canceled or postponed. I'm still going to do them!

DG: Where are they going to be?
KK: One will be St. Louis, Missouri, one in will be in Brussels, Belgium, two will be in Greece, one in Athens one on the island of Tinos. 

DG: Why St. Louis, Missouri?
KK: The first Sanctuary exhibition took place there. It was well-received, but there was one aspect of the exhibition that I didn't get to achieve, and I want to achieve that part.

DG: Why Greece?
KK: I want to re-appropriate a space, so something that was usually a factory becomes a place of sanctuary. Using my artwork in a stained-glass manner to cover the windows will create a sort of place of worship or meditation. It's that type of energy I want to relay in an exhibition space.

DG: The exhibition is site-specific. How would that work in Brussels? 
KK: Every space is different. There have to be a lot of windows wherever the exhibition will be. In the factory with high ceilings and windows, you can have that effect immediately. In a smaller space, it's imperative that you have windows it's something that can be reinvented millions of times. I'm going to make that installation all over this planet if I can so that people can come in, sit down, and get something out of it. Maybe sit there for 15 minutes or an hour and just absorb energy.

DG: When you do your artwork, you impose your energy on each piece; then, the work has its own energy. Is what you put on the canvas, the reflection of your energy, or is it a whole separate being?
KK: It's a reflection of the energies that I have absorbed. It's not even me anymore. I'm just the sponge absorbing it all and finding a way to put it all together and put it back out. I'm sort of channeling it to get it into a specific medium.

DG: Sanctuary has a spiritual connotation. What you've described heads in that direction.
KK: I'm spiritual in the sense that I am aware of and sensitive to that which is not visible. Let's put it this way: without saying positive without saying negative, without saying God, without saying Allah. I believe in energy. Energy is all around us. We are all energy. We are not just human beings walking on a planet which is in a solar system, which is a galaxy which is in what we call a universe. We are that universe because we are the same elements that are above. So, we are everything.

We are sensitive. We should remind ourselves that we should be sensitive to that which is around us.
I gravitate to the spirituality of indigenous peoples from various continents. I gravitate to the ways of the Buddha, not in the destructive aspects of war and things like that, but in the sense that every life matters, be it an insect or be it a walking human being. Respect for nature, respect for life, respect for everything, is dear to me.

I don't like conflict, but I usually manage it well. I'm a calm person by nature. I don't like to get upset, don't like don't get pushed over the edge either. In my artwork, I feel that I have something to do that is bigger than me. I'm not trying to understand everything. I don't say that I understand everything. That which I can control, I try not to control and let it happen.

DG: The energy aspect is fascinating.
KK: It's an amazing thing. I've heard this multiple times: the universe only wants to please us. If we can understand that so many things in life become easy. We all have the capacity to influence nature. We have the capacity to influence the universe, to interact with nature and the universe. Our mission, I feel, and have come closer to understanding, is to remind people of something. We meet people for very specific reasons without fully understanding it in the moment. It's to remind somebody to remember. We are often so wrapped up in the rat race of human existence that we don't slow down for the basic simple things in life. Seeing the beauty and small things that surround us every day. 

I'm not saying you have to be Hari Krishna smiling "life is love" and in euphoric bliss constantly. There's a lot to be gained in taking the time to appreciate things that are happening around you. You look at a baby or a child smiling, and you smile too. There's something about it that's so natural and so pure that it just resonates with you if we spend a little bit of time being sensitive. 

I say the biggest problem in this world is that there's no love. There's no real love for what's around you. If you loved everything that was around you, you wouldn't destroy it. Some people say, when you have a higher vibration, you can become sensitive to things that are on a higher level. Things on a lower level are what we are influenced by regularly. Sometimes you can feel other people's energies just being around them. If I'm in a room, and I walk up to five people, there's a connection that you can have without even having a single word with a person: a connection or repulsion. Something repulses you about an individual without even seeing their face.

What is that? If you're not open to it, you walk right past it. You don't understand, and then whatever happens happens. If you're in tune with it, you can find that sometimes there's something that draws you to open a conversation. Things click, and before you know it, you're talking to someone like you've known them your entire life. Other times it just doesn't click. Interactions and intermixing of energy are something I think that most artists are experiencing when they're going through their creative process. They are connecting to something. At least for me, I feel that I'm connected to something. I don't try to understand what it is. I just accept that it's a good place, and I ride the wave.

DG: You're in the flow.
KK: Yeah. You feel it. You know when you're there, and it's a beautiful thing. You don't' want to let it go.

Enjoy the videos with Kool Koor on the Art Bunker Gallery website or below:

Kool Koor is busy indeed! You can see his work on Facebook and Instagram or live in:

France: 

  • Paris, Gare du Nord: 2nd level--direction #4 line
  • Cannes, Galerie Vieceli, exhibition beginning July 21, 2020.

Belgium: 

  • Brussels, Louvain-la-Neuve station 6--elevator column leading to platform 1.
  • Brussels, Kool Koor, together with Alvari and Mino Ponti, will produce the largest artists' work on vinyl on IT Tower. The work in black, white and gray will be printed on 3M vinyl and applied to the 5000m2 façade of the 120m tall building using heat.

Netherlands:

  • Graffiti legend and Rammellzee and Jean-Michel Basquiat cohort, Kool Koor, has been invited together with Soaq One (graffiti artist and member of the HipHop formation Divorze) and Illustrator Shamisa Debroey to paint an enormous (13m x 2m) mural on the exterior of the Speelhuis Theatre in Helmond as part of the city-wide celebration of Lucas Gassel, the reference in landscape painting. The invited artists represent the cities in which Gassel lived during his lifetime (#Helmond--Soaq One, #Antwerp--Shamisa Debroey and #Brussels—Kool Koor). During this performance, the artists will reinvent Gassel's work in an urban context. 



DG: When I learned that your work is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, I was impressed as hell! Then I thought, "Wait a second, he's a contemporary artist. They don't have contemporary art!"

KK: Apparently, they do! My first gallerist donated the artwork in their collection. So, yes, I have artwork in the Metropolitan Museum, but I'm not very happy about it because they're not letting it live. 



Deborah Gallin is the Founder of Art Works Internationally: Unleash the Unexpected.



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