About Kyle

Biography

Kyle Selley (b. 1992) is a Kansas City, Missouri native, currently teaching and creating in Gainesville, Florida. He is best known for his Firework Residue Paintings, exploring ideas surrounding nostalgia, spirituality, and the sublime. A seven-page showcase article in KC Studio Magazine describes his flatwork as "amorphous and suggestive of infinite space." Selley works playfully and intuitively as he guides fireworks toward an expressive composition and archives the results. His abstract visual language often explores an inner spiritual landscape injunction with concepts like transcendence and the sublime.

Selley's Firework Art utilizes mediums such as videography, digital imagery, performance, ceramics, and works on paper, canvas, and plexiglass. His work set a new precedent in artistic techniques incorporating firework residue. Selley has been nourishing a relationship with fireworks since early childhood, using them creatively and experimentally long before beginning to create fine art.

Several art institutions have endorsed and promoted his work, including nine solo shows, four duo exhibitions, and over two dozen group exhibitions. SNW Gallery and Leawood Fine Art Gallery currently represent Selley. Dominator Fireworks in Beijing, China, sponsors him. Selley graduated from Johnson County Community College with an Associate of Arts degree, studied sculpture and ceramics at the University of Tasmania, and graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. He is currently a Master of Fine Arts candidate at the University of Florida.

artist statement

Dusk breaks as bangs, cracks, and whistles heighten the senses. Vibrant blue smoke stains the driveway as it saturates the atmosphere, smelling of sulfur and gunpowder. My attention suddenly shifts towards the sporadic lights emerging through the delicate vale of artificial clouds, holding me in sublime entrancement. Danger and pandemonium intensify the following stillness. The space is burned and powdered with the memory of the event. The remnants of these festive, Midwestern war zone simulations are the foundation of my work. I use nostalgia, playfulness, and irregularity to connect with the childlike sense of sublimity and openness that was progressively repressed as I became an adult.

Fireworks are idiosyncratic art instruments capable of altering materials in an energetic and unpredictable manner, often via kinetic force, scorching, or pigment transfer. My work ignites experimentation, innovation, contemplation, and intuitive responses to the aberrant movements of fireworks. Their unpredictable nature urges me to abandon precision, which hones my artistic intuition as I remain open to the fickle demands of the creative process. I am the instigator and guide to these materials, not their master.

I began studying Cai Guo-Qiang's performances and dialogue surrounding harmony, ephemerality, and the natural world to better understand universal reactions to fireworks. Humans have evolved to view explosive phenomena such as volcanoes, earthquakes, or cosmic events as signs from The Gods. Qiang's explosive displays reveal fireworks' ability to connect us to the transcendental because we innately interpret them as a higher power. These divine tools can construct a body of work that surpasses outward superficialities to convey a transcendent interior world.

My studies of meditation, stoicism, and psychology through teachers like John Vervaeke, William B. Irvine, and Carl Jung have undoubtedly influenced my series Spiritual Renderings. Following Kandinsky's desire to convey profound spirituality through an abstract visual language, my work expresses and propels the development of my own spiritual life. It illuminates an inner reality that transcends verbal language and distills the human experience. As I construct a personal understanding of spirituality, it is apparent that art-making is an essential component because it provides a sense of direction, acceptance, meaning, and insight.

Friedrich Nietzsche feared that the loss of universal religious values could push humanity toward isolation and nihilism. It is possible to heal this wound by implementing pragmatic spiritual practices. Art-making and creative expression are part of this spectrum. My choice of materials and the sentiments they transmit bring forth a conversation about what post-religious, modern spirituality looks like and what it could be. I am investigating my art's ability to shed light on this profound, collective inquiry.

Nostalgia and spirituality are intrinsic to the human experience, yet mysterious and not easily defined. These transcendental occurrences are individualistic and sacred and link closely through their sublime and ephemeral nature. My art practice continues to evolve through nostalgic contemplation and spiritual development, along with my understanding of these concepts and their convergences.