Kenny Cole

Parabellum (Prepare for War) Kenny ColeMaine-based artist Kenny Cole has created an immersive, interactive installation especially for UMMA’s Zillman Gallery. The artist describes Parabellum as “a culture-jamming, docu-fiction, artivism work of art, which re-writes the past in order to guide us into the future.” Cole has taken on the persona of fictional “Bains Revere,” an American Civil War veteran/outsider artist, to create this visionary work. The installation reflects Revere’s innate pacifism and life-long shifting relationship with Hiram Maxim, a Maine native and real life inventor of the automatic machine gun. This false artifact, made as if it was originally installed in the front parlor room of a home, consists of 82 two-sided canvases. They are painted as a collection of generic red and white flags, the reverse of each containing relief battle maps and nesting underneath it all are hidden, corporeal landscapes. The components are riddled with trompe l’oeil water stains painted onto vintage 1890s newspaper.