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Gary Kuehn was born in Plainfield, New Jersey in 1939. He received a B.A in art history from Drew University in 1962 and an M.F.A from Rutgers, The State University in 1964. After finishing his education, Kuehn moved to New York City and began working in many individual and group exhibitions. Kuehn’s style began in a minimalist nature. However, as he developed as an artist, Kuehn began experimenting with different styles and techniques. Gary Kuehn appreciates and investigates the tension between freedom and constraint in much of his work, along with other inherent conflicts throughout the world. Kuehn claims that he is not attempting to make beautiful art, but is instead trying to understand the world around him. His work has been exhibited throughout the United States and abroad, most often in Germany.

Oleg Kudryashov was born in Moscow in 1932.  He attended the Moscow State Arts Studios in 1942-47and the Moscow Art School in 1950-51.  In 1974 he immigrated to London, where he has lived ever since.  Before his departure from the Soviet Union, he destroyed the thousands of works he had created.  Kudryashov has exhibited extensively in Europe and the United States, including shows at the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.  His work is included in the collections of the Pushkin Museum, Moscow, the Tate Gallery, London, the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.  Kudryashov works primarily in the medium of drypoint etching, a technique favored by the seventeenth century Dutch masters.  The artist draws expansively with a burin, a printmaking tool, directly onto a zinc plate.  He then prints these “drawings” on paper on which has already worked in a free-form style with a variety of media, including gouache, watercolor, and charcoal.  In the late 1970s he began to cut up his work and reconstruct the elements, creating three-dimensional artworks that blur the lines between drawing, sculpture, and printmaking.  The combination of hard-edged geometric forms with painterly abstraction points to the influence of early-twentieth0century Russian Constructivism and Cubism, as well as the Abstract Expressionism of New York in the 1950s.  Among the recurring references in his work is a broken saw, which has been said to find its roots in childhood experiences in the freezing Russian winters.

*Excerpted from Tools as Art: the Hechinger Collection, published by Harry N. Abrams Inc.

www.oleg-kudryashov.com/

Margaret Kranking was born in Florence, South Carolina, in 1930. However, she spent most of her time as a resident of Washington D.C. She received a B.A. in fine arts from American University, and was named a Clendenin Fellow of Art History after graduating summa cum laude. Kranking mostly worked with watercolors to capture the quality of light. She also appreciated the effects of sunlight on daily light. Kranking died on November 26, 2013.

Mark Kostabi was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1960, and grew up in Whittier, California.  After studying at California State University at Fullerton from 1978 to 1981, he moved to New York City in 1982.  Kostabi had his first New York exhibition at the Ronald Feldman Gallery in 1986 and has exhibited internationally since, including shows at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Mitsukoshi Museum in Tokyo, Japan.  All of his work, which is primarily painting, is created at his “factory” in Brooklyn, New York, known as Kostabi World, where he employs artists to design and paint images that he then signs.  He is known for faceless “Everyman” figures, which he places in simply depicted settings.  His work often includes art historical references and images from earlier periods of art.

*Excerpted from Tools as Art: the Hechinger Collection, published by Harry N. Abrams Inc.

http://mkostabi.com/

Leonard Koscianski was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1952. He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine, in 1976, and earned a B.F.A. from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1977. In 1919 he completed an M.F.A. at the University of California, Davis, where he was Wayne Thiebaud's teaching assistant. Since then he has pursued a teaching career in conjunction with his art making. He has been the recipient of several awards, including three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in 1983, 1985, and 1989, and was a Rockefeller Foundation Scholar in Italy in 1989. His work has been exhibited throughout the United States and can be found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, D.C. While finishing his studies at Davis, Koscianski began a pastel series that exploited the dual nature of tools as beautiful, utilitarian objects that can also harm. A strong sense of drama is evident in the high-keyed, saturated palette, the oblique angle of representation, and the exaggerated chiaroscuro of these early drawings, qualities that also appear in his more recent paintings. These techniques complement Koscianski's interest in creating threatening, quasi-Surrealist images to evoke the implied or actual power of his oversize objects.

*Excerpted from Tools as Art: The Hechinger Collection, published by Harry N. Abrams Inc.

Patrick Kirwin was born in 1959 in Columbus, Ohio.  He received his B.F.A. in 1983 from the Columbus College of Art and Design, Ohio, and an M.F.A. in 1987 from George Washington University, Washington,D.C. He continued his studies with a fellowship at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine, in 1991.  He has been artist-in-residence at the Griffis Art Center in New London, Connecticut, and the Hambridge, Center in Rabun Gap, Georgia.  His work has been exhibited throughout the mid-Atlantic area.  Kirwin explores a variety of subjects and styles and is equally comfortable working in oil, tempera, pastel, acrylic, and watercolor.

*Excerpted from Tools as Art: the Hechinger Collection, published by Harry N. Abrams Inc.

 www.patrickkirwin.com/

Geof Kern was born in 1950 in New York City and is based in Dallas where he opened his first studio. He is a photographer who is sought after for fashion spreads, but he prefers other forms of photography. He generally uses people he knows to create his scenes. He uses storyboards, and avoids happenstance within his photos. While he enjoys the rationalism of photography, he also appreciates the conceptualism of illustration. He has an erratic and unique style that has brought about his rise to fame. His work is included in the collections of institutions such as the Musée des Arts Décoratifs Paris and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Bayat Keerl was born in Basel, Switzerland, in 1948. He earned a B.F.A. from the Layton School of Art, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1970, and an M.F.A. two years later from Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. He received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1981 and 1987. He has exhibited in Switzerland, Sweden, and throughout the United States, and his work is included in such collections as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Union Bank of Switzerland, and the Swiss Institute, New York. Keerl started his career as a performance artist, and he carried his interest in movement into later work, which consists of large photo enlargements of objects and figures in motion, overlaid with painting. The resulting blurred and shifting images explore culturally constructed ways of seeing and fabricating reality.

*Excerpted from Tools as Art: The Hechinger Collection, published by Harry N. Abrams Inc.