Biografia
Ken Aptekar toys with paintings from the past by using the history of art as his playground. He time-travels masterpieces into the present by his repainting joined to his own texts. Here’s the idea: Paintings are nothing on their own, they start meaning something only when you start talking back to them.
Born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1950, Aptekar received his BFA (University of Michigan, 1973), then moved to Brooklyn (MFA, Pratt Institute 1975). Solo museum exhibitions include Victoria & Albert Museum (London), Corcoran Museum (Washington, DC), Memorial Art Gallery (Rochester, NY), New Museum (NY), Musée Robert-Dubois-Corneau, (Brunoy, France), among others. Upcoming solo museum exhibitions include the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford, UK) and the St.-Annen Museum (Lübeck, Germany). A survey, Ken Aptekar: Painting Between the Lines, 1990-2000, (Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City 2001) completed its tour in 2002. Solo gallery exhibitions include James Graham & Sons, Bernice Steinbaum, Pamela Auchincloss Projects, Jack Shainman Gallery, and Bess Cutler Gallery (all NYC). The Mint Museum (Charlotte, NC) recently commissioned Aptekar to produce works based on their 1762 portrait of Queen Charlotte. He has received two NEA Painting Fellowships, a Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation Award, a Rockefeller Residency (Bellagio), and a Pollock-Krasner Award.
Aptekar lives with the writer Eunice Lipton, and divides his time between New York and Paris.
