SUPERSTAR SHADOW (1986)

SUPERSTAR SHADOW is a wall-text painting for which Kennedy painted his name from floor to celling across the whole gallery space in his variation of the Superstar Shadow type face. He first installed the work in 1986 at Stride Gallery (Calgary), then again, this time using his iconic choice of Empire Yellow paint, at Cold City Gallery (Toronto). SUPERSTAR SHADOW was subsequently included in Kennedy's solo exhibition Wall Paintings and Related Works 1974-1995 at the Owens Art Gallery (Sackville, NB) in 1996, as well as in his retrospective Work of Four Decades which travelled from the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (Halifax) to the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa) and Beaverbrook Art Gallery (Fredericton, NB) between 2000-2001. The work was last installed at Nickle Art Museum (Calgary) in 2002.

"In this work I painted my name from floor to ceiling, spacing the letters so as to cover all the walls of Stride Gallery. The work is painted in a variation of the typeface Superstar Shadow—altered so that its shadow was not cast below (to the right) but directly sideways (to the right). My name therefore is seen neither from above nor from below but head-on, at eye level, so to speak. Further, only the shadows are painted (with the same paint I used to cover the Canadian fleet—for no good reason other than because it was left over from Figure Painting in NYC. Also, I thought it would be nice to bring a touch of maritime colour to the west.) Mary Scott, who assisted me with the painting, was co-director of Stride with Don Corman—who also took the photos. Nancy Tousley wrote a review of the show for the Calgary Herald.

A year later when I made the same work at Cold City Gallery, Toronto, I used Pittsburgh Paints' Empire Yellow. This was the first of many works where I used paint companies' names to direct or influence the content of the work. The imperialistic gesture to take over the entire gallery space, by travelling my name throughout the office, over the windows and washroom doors was in sync with the colour selection. At the time Marlene Klassen was the director of Cold City Gallery."

-Garry Neill Kennedy, Superstar Shadow (1984-2005), pg.20