VISUAL ART BY MICHAEL KERBOW

LATE CAPITALISM

STATEMENT:

I have recently begun working on a new series of paintings I call “Late Capitalism”.  These works depict the return of the dinosaurs as they overrun our world. They are allegories about the growing threat of fossil fuels and climate change upon our society. The cars and freeways are symbolic of our fossil fuel based society. The billboards and storefronts represent the underlying driving force of capitalism. And the dinosaurs, now freed by our actions, represent the destructive violence of climate change and the specter of extinction.

On a more personal level, this series of paintings is a nostalgia of my childhood. As a five year old boy, my two main obsessions were cars and dinosaurs. These things were so cherished in my youth that it was inevitable they would find their way into my artwork. The dinosaurs I portray here may not be up to date with current paleoscience, but they epitomize the look of the illustrations I remember seeing as a boy by classic paleo-artists such as Charles R. Knight, Rudolph Zallinger, and Zdeněk Burian.

Michael Kerbow is a San Francisco-based artist who works in a variety of media including painting, drawing, assemblage, and digitally manipulated photography. He was born in North Carolina and received an MFA from Pratt Institute in New York. He moved to the Bay Area in 1993. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and has appeared in multiple publications. He has been twice nominated for SFMOMA’s prestigious SECA award.  His work is currently in a traveling museum exhibition called “Environmental Impact II”, which is an environmental-themed show touring a number of museums across the country.