ARTNEWS April 2011
Marcus Kenney
Almighty(2010) , the most provacatively ambiguous work in the exhibition, is a reclaimed kitsch tribal idol, perhaps originally racist in intent. Kenney has decorated it with dollar bills and a pair of sneakers imprinted with images of hundred dollar notes adorned with skulls. This is humor designed to produce nervous laughter. "
Jerry Cullum
South Magazine Feb/March 2011
State of the Artist
Nothing is safe from this artist's acquisitive creative urge, be it stuffed animal heads, tacky neon handbags or hundreds of conical thread curlers he picked up " at the getting place." Marty Olmstead
Artpapers july/august 2008
Marcus Kenney Atlanta (excerpt)
"Kenney has added new and troubling protagonists to his frenzied lexicon: mutated-looking children who invoke an idealized past of storybooks and simpler times while they intimate a sinister future. With their eyes and lips formed of bits of wallpaper and magazines, the kiddies are as manufactured as the horrific landscapes they occupy. Kenney creates a frightening proposotion by consistently using children to act out his dramas in Midnight In America: rather than free-choice, Americans have been spoon fed a diet of sex and violence that has created ghastly, frightening automatons who act without conscience or hesitation." Felcia Feaster
The Commercial Appeal June 20, 2008
Kenney's Kids: Ambiguos Trios (excerpt)
"Justice, Liberty, and Equality features three figures- a blonde-haired, blue eyed chain smoker wearing a viking helmet and carrying a bloody sword; an African American tot wielding an american flag; and a stiff, doll like girl frozen in midplay. Conjured from acryic, wallpapers, color samples and a mimmegraphed musical score, they resemble the patriotioc trio depicted in Archibald Willards iconic "Spirt of 76".
Andrea Lisle
Art in America September 2006
Atlanta: Marcus Kenney At Marcia Wood (excerpt)
"Intermission presents another troubling scene. With Fragments of brown paper bags, Kenney imagines a seething volcano on the brink of eruption, it's mouth a marbled cutout from a paint-by-number canvas. On his knees beneath the mottled pink and azure sky painted over an expanse of cancelled checks. Pinocchio clasps his hands in plea for deliverance. "
Cathy Byrd
The South Magazine February/March 2007
The Mixed up World of Marcus Kenney (excerpt)
"Childhood is a recurring theme in Kenney's work. Images taken from both vintage children's books and advertisments from America's "golden years" of the 1950's portray the idealized american youth as happy-go-lucky and innocent in a chaotic, apocalyptic world. " It is sort of a weird amalgamation of biblical stories, pop culture and current events." Kenney explains"
Elizabeth Young
The New York Times February 24 2008 (exceprt)
Catching the Imagination in Language and Imagery
"Marcus Kenney appropraites canceled checks, newspaper, glossy magazine images, antique wallpaper to create lively, cartoon like collage paintings of playground scenes. In one painting a little boy does battle in the schoolyard holding a sword and a shield emblazoned with an image of jesus holding a lamb."
Benjamin Gecchio
Atlanta Journal Constitution April 23 2004
Scavenging for Fun's Sake (exceprt)
"Kenney displays an insouciant wit at times, sometimes spoofing the subjects- like a flock of migrating geese you'd find in the conventional paint-by-numbers canvases he sometimes cuts up to put on his peices.But mostly, he seems too be having creative fun."
Catherine Fox
The Florida Times Union July 21 2003
Young Artists Taking on Race Issues (excerpt)
"In several pieces, Kenney who is white, tackles the debate over the Confederate flag, gentrification of historically black neighborhoods and the civil rights movement."
Hermione Malone
The New York Art Magazine Vol. 12 no 1/2
Collage Matters (excerpt)
"You know all those jaw dropping , monumental collages that you tried your hand at every month or so throughout high school and college from the pages of year's worth of hoarded fashion and design magazines? Maybe this was just me and every other teenage gir in the late 90's, but there's something serious to be said for making assemblage art cool again, and worthwhile for once. Artist Marcus Kenney is the culprit putting everyone of us to shame on this all too well trodden front. Thanks to years of hoarding worlds more than old issues of elle, art forum and seventeen, Kenney has both creative talent and a massive, noteworthy collection of found printed matter to his credit and artisitic advantage. "
Whitney May
Coastal Antiques and Art Ocotber 2002
The Creative Mind of Marcus Kenney (excerpt)
"Part of the genius of Kenney's work lies in the editing process, the series of decisions about which objects to collect and how to incorporate them into finished works of art. His chaotic studio overflows with ephemera he has found in Savannah's dumpsters and back alleys. "These are relics of our time," he says ,pointing to a basket full of rakes and brooms. "We would be excited if we found an Indian hatchet made of stone from the 15th century. We're just living in the future. One day, you'll find rakes and brooms imusuems as relics of the 20th century."
Alison Hersh
Mind the Cracks (cat.) 2009
Collages From the Tel Aviv Musuem and other collections. (excerpt)
" The childish,seemingly uninvolved appearence in Marcus Kenney's work is a seductive screening for a critical examination of charged issues such as the darker side of capitalism, inter-racial relationships and rewriting American history. "
Irith Hadar
Painter's Reel (cat.) 2009
Marcus Kenney (excerpt)
"When India fired a rocket into orbit around the moon in the fall of 2008, I mentally illustrated the event with what appeared to be a painting by Marcus Kenney. I envisioned an outer space galaxy with random, unnamed planets; Hindu deities with shuffled symbolisms riding rockets; clusters of Indian families and decorated cows on isolated space outposts; and Buddha as the man in the moon, wearing a space helmet. What is this, when an artist's imagery illustrates scenes never made or concieved by them, but wholly imagined by another? "
Betsy Cain
The Boston Globe May 9, 2006
Marcus Kenney : Young American (excerpt)
"The collision of innocence and packaged sophistication agaisnt backdrops such as text interpreting the Bible is combustible. Kenney points out how the social roles young people try on refelect our society's values, and he skewers how plastic and shallow those values have become."
Cate McQuaid
SouthXEast: Contemporary Southeastern Art (cat.) January 2005 (excerpt)
"Somehow Kenney manages this disjunction to create paintings that embody old idyllic worlds while strongly reminding us that we are being warmed by the flame of a potent contemporary image maker whose fire is just getting hot."
W. Rod Faulds
Georgia Triennial (Cat.) 2003
Marcus Kenney (excerpt)
"On one hand, Kenney has the keen eye of the artist and is the master of his own unique brand of visual assemblage: the installation stands on its own as an object. On the other hand, Kenney is reclaiming the history of the real people to whom these discaderd books and furniture once belonged; he has built a monument to the anonymous and the lonely."
Luis Shaw
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