KEN BUTLER BIO

Ken Butler is an artist and musician whose hybrid musical instruments, collage drawings, performances, and installations explore the interaction and transformation of common objects, altered images, sounds and silence.
His works have been featured in numerous exhibitions and performances throughout the USA, Canada, and Europe including The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and Exit Art, Thread Waxing Space, The Kitchen, The Brooklyn Museum, Lincoln Center and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City as well as in South America, Thailand, and Japan. His works have been reviewed in The New York Times, The Village Voice, Artforum, Smithsonian, and Sculpture Magazine and have been featured on PBS, CNN, MTV, and NBC, including a live appearance on The Tonight Show. Awards include fellowships from the Oregon Arts Commisssion, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Ken Butler studied viola as a child and maintained an interest in music while studying visual arts in France, at Colorado College, and Portland State University where he completed his MFA in painting in 1977.
He has performed with John Zorn, Laurie Anderson, Butch Morris, The Soldier String Quartet, The Tonight Show Band, and The Master Gnawa musicians of Morocco. His CD, Voices of Anxious Objects is on Zorn’s Tzadik label.

Works by Ken Butler are represented in public and private collections in Portland, Seattle, Vail, Los Angeles, Toronto, Montreal, and New York City including the permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Artist Statement

My hybrid musical instrument sculptures, collage/drawings, performances, and audio-visual installations explore the interaction and transformation of objects, sounds, and altered images as function and form collide in the intersection of art and music. A spirit of re-invention and hyper-utility attempts to reveal hidden meanings and associations, momentarily creating a striking and re-animated cultural identity for common objects.
String instruments become body, tool, weapon, toy, symbol, machine, phallus, creature, sculpture, icon, and voice. Keyboards become cybernetic architecture. Anxious objects speak in tongues.
Contemporary urban life is a bewildering collage of multiple images, ideas, sounds, and objects in a constant state of flux as information overload becomes the touchstone of our age. As we move from the mechanical to the electrical, this churning mass chews up and spits out material with re-assigned priorities and updates. The resulting detritus is a living corpse - a random and chaotic body of juxtaposed and deconstructed items and associations. From this storehouse of forsaken objects and hardware I, the urban bricoleur, further dismantle and reassemble the consumer society into functional assemblages in the form of musical instrument/objects, then coax them to sing for their supper.
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“The capitals could have been in the chicken runs before they were in the temples, the marble urns could have been planted with basil before they werre filled with dead bones. Only this is known for sure: a given number of objects is shifted within a given space, at times submerged by a quantity of new objects, at times worn out and not replaced; the rule is to shuffle them each time, then try to assemble them.”
Italo Calvino
Invisible Cities

“...profound analogies between humanity, the animal, vegetable, and mechanical worlds...all the significations of light, sound, noise, and language....luminously explains the governing laws of life: the necessity of complication and varying rhythm: a synthesis of speed and transformation...a perpetual dynamic of thought , an uninterrupted current of images and sounds, is alone able to express the ephemeral, unstable, and symphonic universe that is forging itself in us and with us .”
Filippo Marinetti
The Variety Theater

Discography

Ken Butler, “Voices of Anxious Objects”, (with 16-page color booklet.)
Tzadik Records, TZ 7402, Nov. 1997.
Judith Ren-Lay, Out of Nowhere, Knitting Factory Records, 2001.
“Gravikords, Whirlies & Pyrophones: Experimental Musical Instruments”, with 96-page booklet and CD, Ellipsis Arts, CD 3530, 1996.
Ric Soshin, “An Artist in The Civilized World”, Phantom Records 4321, 1996.
Lawrence D. Butch Morris, “Testament: Conduction #23”, New World Records,
80482-2, 1995.
Loretta Roome, Eric Feinstein, AS IS, (guitar tracks), for self-produced cassette, Brooklyn, NY, 1994.
Experimental Musical Instruments, Nicasio, Ca., From the Pages cassettes Volume III , 1988, and Volume VIII, 1993.
Ken Butler and Dina Emerson, Gargoyle Mechanique, New York, sampler cassette, 1990.

Film and Video Production

“Hand Song”, 16 mm animated film selected for Ann Arbor Film Festival, 1974.
“Hybrid Antics”, video produced at Rogers Cablesystems, Portland, Ore, 1984.
Art Directed Gus Van Sant’s first film “Mala Noche”, Portland, 1986.
Animation, photography, set design, lighting, and misc. production for music videos produced by:
Julia Heyward Studios, 59 Franklin, NYC.
MTV “Buzz” segments, 1990.
MTV Alien Artbreak, 1989.
“Workin For Somebody Else”- The DB’s, 1987.
Jim Blashfield Studios, Portland, Ore.
“Stop Doggin Me Around”- Michael Jackson 1988.
“Boy In a Bubble”- Paul Simon 1987.
“Dog Eat Dog”- Joni Mitchell 1986.
“And She Was”- Talking Heads 1985.
Soundtrack for “Suspicious Circumstances”, 1984.
Karl Krogstad Studios, Seattle, Washington.
Director of animation for “Little Blue Men”, with Debra Winger, (unreleased), 1985.
Bob Gardiner Studios, Portland, Ore.
Elvis Presley Special (claymation), 1976.
Portland Parks Bureau (claymation), 1975.

Media and TV appearances

Live on NPR, WNYC radio, John Schaeffers New Sounds, 4/00.
Feature story on Ripley's Believe It Or Not, FOX TV, 1/00.
Live appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, NBC, LA, 4/5/99.
Feature stories on CNN Inrternational by Jeanne Moos, CNBC by Alex Dawson (also ran on NBC news), NYC,1/98.
Station ID’s for MTV (M2), “A Guide to (Really) Alternative Music”, Monad Films, NYC, 1997.
Feature story, “Another Story From Planet Earth”, Fuji Television, Tokyo, Mado Productions, 5/95.
Live appearance for Joe Boxer Promotion, (w. Gilbert Gottfried) Times Square, NY, Beth Grossman, C.M.A. Productions, 3/27/97.
Feature story on “City Arts” by Harvey Wang, PBS, Ch. 13, NYC, 9/95. Also included in City Arts program featuring performer Judith Ren-Lay, 10/95.
Feature story on WWOR-TV Ch.9, NYC, “Scene and Heard”, by Heidi Kemp, 6/95.
Live appearance, Sound F/X, Fox Cable, 4/95.
French Television, FR3, stories from St. Brieuc, Bourges Festivals, 9/93, 4/94, 8/94. Also 8 live radio appearances.
Live appearance “To Tell The Truth”, NBC, Burbank, Ca. 1991.
Live appearances, KTV, CNBC, NY, 1990 & 91.
Live appearance, Metropolis, Montreal Television, 1990.
Appearance, “Buzz”, MTV with Julia Heyward, 1990. Also appearance in Alien Artbreak, MTV, 1987.
Feature on news, “Live at 5”, NBC, NY, by Conni Collins, 5/87.
Feature story, “P.M. Magazine”, NBC, Portland, Oregon, by Cheryl Hansen, 1986.
Stories on news, NBC, ABC, CBS, KPTV, KPBS, stories on news, Portland, Oregon, prior to 1988 (move to NY).
Hybrid Instruments were featured in MTV’s first feature film “Joe’s Apartment”, 1996.

RESUME

Education and Training

Portland State University, Portland, Oregon, MFA in painting, 1977
The Colorado College, Colorado Springs, Colorado, BA in studio art, 1970
The Image Circle Photographic Study Center, San Francisco, California, workshop with Ruth Bernhardt, 1970
The Institute for American Universities, Aix-en-Provence, France, studio art and French, 1968-69

Grants and Awards

New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Multidisciplinary / Performance Art, New York, 1999
New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Emergent Forms / Performance Art, New York, 1993
National Endowment for the Arts Inter-Arts Project Grant, for the creation of “Two Fruit Flies: a micro opera”, New York, 1989
National Endowment for the Arts New Langston Multidisciplinary Project Grant, Portland, 1987
National Endowment for the Arts Artist Fellowship in Performance Art, Portland, 1983
Oregon Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship, Portland, 1983
Portland Civic Auditorium purchase of work, Portland, 1983
Rogers Cable Television video production grant for experimental project, Portland, 1983
Portland Developement Commission Art in Public Places grant, Portland, 1982
Portland Metropolitan Arts Commission Public Art grant, Portland, 1982
Portland Metropolitan Arts Commission Performance grant for collaborative multi-media performance / installation, Portland, 1981
Portland Metropolitan Arts Commission Public Art grant, Portland, 1981
Seattle Arts Commission Seattle Selects 1% for the Arts purchase of work, Portland, 1979
Portland Metropolitan Arts Commission Art in Public Places purchase of work, Portland, 1979

Exhibitions / Performance / Installation (selected)

2000

Performance, Solo, with hybrid instruments, live internet broadcast, Location One, NYC, 12/9/00
Exhibition,"Dangerous Curves:Art of the Guitar", The Boston Museum of Fine Art, Boston, 10/28-2/24/00
Performance,"Lost and Sound", a solo multi-media performance with hybrid instruments and video projections, Galapagos Art Space, Brooklyn, NY, 11/17/00
Performance, With trio, Tonic, NYC, 10/12/00
Exhibition,"Selections", Eyewash Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, 9/23-10/29/00
Exhibition, "Lost and Sound", (solo), sculpture and collage, Florence Lynch Gallery, NYC,
9/14-10/21,00
Performance, Solo, The Lacoste School of the Arts, Lacoste, France, 7/29/00
Performance, With trio, The Knitting Factort, NYC, 7/25/00
Performance, Solo, for the NAMM Convention, Nashville, Tn, 7/22-23/00
Performance, Solo, and imrovisatons with musicians, Location 1, 7/17/00
Performance, Voices of Anxious Objects, with trio, The Knitting Factory, NYC, 7/25/00 & 5/2/00
Performance, collaboration with sound artist Ferdinand Forsch, The Kitchen, NYC, 4/8/00
Perfrormance,Voices of Anxious Objects, with trio, The Den, NYC, 3/11/00
Exhibition, "Subject to Sound", The Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, 3/30-5/20/00
Exhibition, Stockholm Art Fair, with Florence Lynch Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden, 3/9-12/00
Performance, with quartet, "Voices of Anxious Objects", BAM Cafe, Brooklyn, NY, 2/24/00.
Exhibition, "Material Resurrection", Arts Alliance of Haverstraw, Haverstraw, NY, 2/20-5/3/00,
performance 2/20/00.
Performance, solo, "Voices of Anxious Objects", The Sculpture Center, NYC, 1/22/00.
Instrument Design/Performance, "The Thai Elephant Orchestra Project", Lampang Elephant Preserve, Lampang, Thailand, 1/6-16/00.
Exhibition, "The End: An Independent Vision of the History of Contemporary Art", Exit Art, NYC, 1/29-4/8/00.
Exhibition, "Studies for Sculpture", Concordia College Gallery, Bronxville, NY, 1/14-2/23/00

1999

Performance, solo (live internet broadcast), The Knitting Factory, NYC, 12/20/99.
Performance, Benefit for Arts Genesis, Victory Hall, Jersey City, NJ, 12/18/99.
Performance, solo, Ericcson Cyberlab, NYC, 12/9/99.
Performance/lecture, Eastern Washington University, Cheney, Wa., 11/18/99.
Performance/lecture, Cheney Cowles Museum, Spokane, Wa., 11/17/99
Performance/lecture, Spokane Falls Comm. College, Spokane, Wa, 11/16/99.
Exhibition, "Tools As Art: Fantasy at Work": The Heckinger Collection, National Building Museum, Washington, D.C.,9/99-1/00
Performance, Duo with Bill Buchen, tabla, NYFA sponsored, 6th and B. Garden, NYC, 8/14/99.
Exhibition, The New York Photography Fair, w. Florence Lynch Gallery. Puck Bldg, NYC, 8/99
Exhibition, "Familiar Stangers", Galapagos ArtSpace, Brooklyn, NY, 8/99.
Performance, live video projection and design for Dina Emerson's Utopia Parkway, HERE Theatre, NYC, 8/7-8/99
Performance, live music and audio-visuals for "Speaking in Tongues", a multi-media performance, The Lacoste School of the Arts, Lacoste, France, 7/4/99.
Performance, solo, "Voices of Anxious Objects", The Lacoste School of the Arts, Lacoste, France, 6/28/99.
Performance, “Voices of Anxious Objects”, with hybrid instruments and tabla, interactive sculpture, and live multiple camera video projections, Galapagos, B-klyn, 5/21-22/99.
Performance, (with trio), The Knitting Factory, NYC, 5/18/99.
Exhibition, The Vienna Austrotel Art Fair, w. Florence Lynch Gallery, Vienna, Austria, 5/99
Performance (tour), Library, Cambridge, Md. 3/18/99, 14 Carat Cabaret, Baltimore, Md. 3/19/99,
Red, Washington, DC, 3/20/99.
Performance, “Household Exotica”, a multi-media performance with inter-active sculpture, live video projections and music, with quartet (as below), The Brooklyn Museum,3/6/99. Exhibition, “Carrying On,” Littman Gallery, Portland State University, Oregon, 3/5-26/99.
Exhibition, “Valentine Collaborations”, Eyewash Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, 2/14-3/21/99.
Performance, quartet with Stomu Takeishi, Seido Salifoski and Ron Baron, the Knitting Factory, NYC, 2/8/99.
Exhibition, “Zone of Risibility”, The Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, 2/4-3/27/99. (catalog)
Performance, with Dina Emerson, benefit for The Talking Band, La Mama Galleria, NYC, 1/28/99.
Exhibition, Multi-Media Art, Ericsson Cyberlab, 55 Broad St., NYC,1/20/99.

1998

Performance, solo, Art and Science Collaborations event, Soho loft, NYC, 12/18/98.
Performance, with trio, The Knitting Factory, 11/24/98
Performance, solo, Theatre du Loup, Geneva, Switzerland, 11/14/98.
Film Performance, “A Page of Madness”,with trio, Galapagos, Brooklyn, 11/7/98.
Performance, solo, The American Gallery, NYC, 9/3/98.
Exhibition, Offbeat, Eyewash Gallery, Brookllyn, NY, 10/17-11/20/98.
Exhibition, sound art exhibit, “ Detatchable Music for a Collapsible Culture”, Detroit Artists Market, Michigan, 10/2-30/98. (catalog)
Exhibition, (solo) Happening, American Gallery, NYC, 9/10-30, Performance 9/23/98.
Exhibition, Art Brut, Festival de la Batie, Geneva, Switzerland, 9/3-14/98, Performance, Musique Brut, Alhambra Theatre, Geneva,9/12/98.
Performance, with trio with Hybrid Instruments, Knitting Factory, NYC, 8/29/98.
Exhibition, Collages, Lacoste School of the Arts, Lacoste, France, 7/9/98.
Exhibition, Works on Paper, American Gallery, NYC, 7/9-8/8/98.
Exhibition, Hybrid Instruments, Ericsson Cyberlab, NYC, from 5/8/98.
Performance, with trio, Texaco NY Jazz Festival, Obeca Li Bar, NYC, 6/14/98.
Exhibition, Hybrid Instruments and Collages, Art Nation Projects at the Art X-Change, NYC, 6/4- 10/98, Performance 6/6/98.
Performance, (private reception for artists and collectors), Exit Art, NYC, 4/2/98
Exhibition of Hybrid instruments, Objects of Music, Metropolitan Life Windows, NYC, 12/97- 3/98.
Performance, CD release for Voices of Anxious Objects, with trio, The Knitting Factory, NYC, 2/4/98.
Installation, Interactive keyboard Object Opera, Exhibition of instruments, C-Space, Citicorp Atrium, NYC, 1/20-2/6/98, Performances 1/23,30 and 2/6/98.
Performance, (solo) Experimental Instrument Festival,The Knitting Factory, NYC, 1/15/98.
Exhibition of Hybrid instruments, Ellipsis Arts Event, The Wintergarden Theater, World Financial Center, NYC, 1/7-16/98. Performance (solo)1/14/98.
Performance, Click and Drag, Mother, NYC, 1/10/98.
Exhibition, The Great Outdoors, Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland, OR, 12/4-1/3/98.

1997

Performance, Performance Mix (solo), Joyce Theater Soho, NYC, 12/15/97.
Performance, Voices of Anxious Objects, (with Tarik Banzi), Conduit, Portland, OR, 1/14-15/97.
Performance, Loud Music, Silent Film (Witchcraft, with Judith Ren-Lay), The Knitting Factory 10/26/97.
Performance, with The Paradox Trio, Dublin Booksellers, NYC, 10/9/97.
Exhibition, The Body Electric, Guitar Art, Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada, 9-12/97.
Performance, (with John Zorn and my quartet), The Knitting Factory, NYC, 7/26/97.
Performance, with Rebecca Moore, New Music Festival, Fez, NYC, 7/18/97.
Exhibition, Current Undercurrent: Working in Brooklyn, Brooklyn Museum, 7/97-1/98.
Installation, Interactive keyboard installation, Art X-change, 67 Broad St.,5-6/97.
Exhibition, Art Moving Show, 4 Walls, Brooklyn, 5/97.
Performance, with quartet, The Knitting Factory, NYC, 5/8/97.
Performance, solo Sarah Lawrence University, 4/29/97.
Exhibition, Making Music, Champion Plaza Gallery, Stamford, CN, 4-8/97.8/97.
Performance, Kraine Theater, NYC, 4/6/97.
Performance, Williamsburg Art and Historical Center, Brooklyn, 3/23/97
Performance, Islip Art Museum, Islip, NY, 3/16/97.
Performance, Space Untitled, NYC, 3/15/97.
Performance, quintet with Hybrid instruments, Reed College, Portland, OR, 2/22/97.
Performance, Voices of Anxious Objects, The Patron’s Lounge, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, 2/7/97.
Performance, The Knitting Factory, NYC, 2/13/97.
Exhibition, Recycled Art and Design, The Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA, 2/13-7/27/99. Exhibition, More and More, The Islip Museum of Art, Islip, NY, 2/22-4/18/97.
Exhibition, (solo) Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland, OR, 2/5-3/1/97

1996

Exhibition, Sequence (collage/drawings), Art Nation, NYC, 11/19-12/17/96. Performance 12/6.
Performance, Hybrid Cubism, a multi-media performance with projections and live trio, The PuffinRoom, NYC, 11/8-8/96.
Performance, Film performance with Judith Ren-Lay, The Knitting Factory, NYC, 10/20/96.
Performance, Socrates Sculpture Park, NYC, 9/26/96.
Performance, The Dada Ball, benefit for Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, OR, 9/21/96.
Performance, The Creative Conference, Portland Center for the Performing Arts, Portland, OR, 9/20/96.
Performance, Swirled Music, as part of the Soho Festival,The Ohio Theater, NYC, 9/6-8/96.
Exhibition, Surface Noise, 8th Floor Gallery, NYC, 9/3-14/96.
Performance, for the National Poetry Slam Finals, Portland Center for the Performing Arts, Portland, OR, 8/24/96.
Performance, collaboration with poet, Acanthus Gallery, Portland, OR, 8/8/96.
Exhibition, Fifteenth Anniversary Show, Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland, OR, 8/1-31/96,Trio performance 8/16/96.
Performance, multi-media collaboration with composer John Beppler, Thread Waxing Space, NYC, 7/26/96.
Film Performance, with Judith Ren-Lay, The International Festival of Art an Ideas, York Square Theater, New Haven, Cnn. 6/28/96.
Exhibition, Seven Instruments, The Knitting Factory, NYC, continuous from 6/10/96.
Exhibition, The Crest Hardware Show, Brooklyn, NY, 5/96.
Exhibition, Drawings, The Bernard Toale Gallery, Boston, Ma. 5/96.
Film Performance, with Judith Ren-Lay, The Knitting Factory, NYC, 5/29/96.
Performance, The Puffin Room, 5/22/96.
Performance, The Haus of Ouch, NYC. 5/1/96.
Exhibition, Interactive installation, B61 Show, One Main St. Dumbo, Brooklyn, 5/8- 6/30/96.
Exhibition, Constriction: a collective sound installation, Pierogi 2000, Brooklyn, NY,5/4-27/96.
Performance, with Hybrid instruments, Gowanus Arts Exchange, Brooklyn, 5/5/96.
Exhibition, Making Music, The American Wing of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, 4/9-7/28/96. Performance at press preview 4/8/96.
Performance, The Society for Ethical Culture, Brooklyn, NY, 3/29/96.
Performance, La Mama Gallery, NYC, 3/9/96.
Film Performance, with Judith Ren-Lay, The Knitting Factory, 2/4/96.
Performance, The Children’s Museum of Manhattan, NYC, 1/27-28/96.
Performance, Insects and Anxious Objects, multi-media performance with interactive projections, text and live music, The Kitchen, NYC, 1/18-20/96.
Exhibition, Neo-Kinetics, 473 Broadway, NYC, 2/27-3/2/96.
Performance, War, a radio performance collaboration, WKCR, NYC, 2/2/96.

(additional listings from 1995-1973 available on request)