FAST, FREE & EASY / SCHNELL, FREI & LEICHT (2003)

FAST, FREE & EASY is one of Kennedy's Superstar Shadow wall-text paintings, however, the work stands out in his oeuvre for its computer generated arrangement and complex colour grid. The work was first installed at Goodwater Gallery (Toronto) in English then, later that year, it was re-staged at Art Fourm (Berlin) as SCHNELL, FREI & LEICHT. Here, Kennedy speaks to the details of the work:

"I thought the words 'Fast, Free, and Easy', which had recently popped up in my reading, would fit neatly (Es and Fs — always excellent letters for Superstar Shadow) into the small Goodwater storefront gallery on Dundas Street. The three-word text followed a computer-based configuration that was conceived by Roger Bywater, and the work's nine colours were lifted from an IKEA decorative carpet. I was particularly attracted to the word 'free'. I had used it years before as an artist's book. The German version of the text was later installed in Berlin by the Goodwater gallerists John Goodwin and Roger Bywater."

—Garry Neill Kennedy, Garry Neill Kennedy: Superstar Shadow 1984-2005 Folder, NGC