Richard Kraft grew up in London and now divides his time between New York’s Hudson River Valley and Los Angeles. He received a BFA from Parsons School of Design and an MFA from the University of Michigan.
Kraft’s multi-disciplinary approach (which incorporates photography, video, collage, drawing and performance) seeks to construct environments and interrupt the world around us so that incongruities, paradoxes, and multiplicity of meaning might yield a new orientation to the familiar. Exhibitions include the Charlie James Gallery, LA Louver, Rosamund Felsen, and Greg Kucera, as well as museum, university and non-profit art spaces, including the Portland Art Museum, the Laguna Art Museum, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, the Ruffin Gallery at the University of Virginia, Occidental College, and Printed Matter, among others.
In April 2015 Siglio Press published Kraft’s artist’s book, Here Comes Kitty: A Comic Opera, and he recently co-edited the first complete volume of John Cage’s Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse). Publications include BOMB, Bookforum, and Carousel among other journals, and in 2016 his work was featured in The New Collage Book, a comprehensive survey published by Gestalten.
Kraft has frequently made work for public spaces, with pieces appearing on the sides of buses and in library aisles, as well as for performances which have taken place in Oxford Circus and Speaker’s Corner in London, along the Las Vegas Strip, at the Wendover Air Force Base, outside “Little Sparta” in rural Scotland, and downtown Charlottesville, Virginia. In 2015, The City of West Hollywood (as part of the its thirtieth anniversary celebrations) commissioned Kraft to produce One Hundred Walkers, West Hollywood which received a Year in Review Award from Americans for the Arts/Public Art Network.
On January 20, 2017, when Donald Trump was inaugurated President of the United States, I (along with many others) felt an urgency to keep a close watch on his presidency and to refuse the normalization of his ascendancy to an office for which he is completely unqualified.
One year later, there is no doubt that he is a pathological liar, a racist, a misogynist, a bully, a cheat. In the words of New York Times columnist Charles Blow, he is “a national stain and an international embarrassment.”
Since his inauguration, I have been tracking his actions on a daily basis, and, in the fashion of a soccer referee, assigning colored cards traditionally associated with transgressing rules and codes of conduct in the game.
A “yellow” card indicates a warning. A “red” card signifies a dismissal. Two “yellow” cards for related, sequential offences, earns a “red”— indicated in the videos by a red field with a small yellow triangle.
Adding to the lexicon, a “dark blue” card is shown to members of the Trump administration as they are fired or resign. “Light blue” cards are awarded to people who have publicly stood up to Trump and/or instigated acts of resistance.
Each card is painted on a 7×5” wood panel. The “key” for the piece is a set of drawings with annotations for each card.
The piece itself takes multiple forms. Watch the video project in the Viewing Room.
This piece would not have been possible without the journalists who have reported on Trump’s first year in office while facing extraordinary and unprecedented attacks from the White House. My thanks and gratitude in particular go to The Guardian, The Washington Post, Politifact, Govtrack.us and especially The New York Times which in addition to its regular reporting provided a running list of Trump’s lies, a record of the people, places and things Trump has insulted on Twitter and a tally of his many trips to Trump properties and golf clubs.
Many thanks to the Racial Imaginary Institute for presenting the piece.
As always, my deepest gratitude goes to Lisa Pearson for her companionship, constant support and for copyediting the cards.