Kent Rogowski

An interview with Kent Rogowski on his series Bears.


Kent Rogowski's Bears is a series of portraits of the most unusual sort: ordinary teddy bears that have been turned inside out and restuffed. Each animal's appearance is determined by the necessities of the manufacturing process. Simple patterns and devices never meant to be seen are now prominent physical characteristics, giving each one a distinctly quirky personality: their fasteners become eyes, their seams become scars, and their stuffing creeps out in the most unexpected places. Together these images form a topology of strange yet oddly familiar creatures. They are at once hideous yet cuddly, disturbing yet endearing, absurd yet adorable, while offering a metaphor for us all to consider. These bears, which have lived and loved and lost as much as their owners, have suffered and endured through it all. It is by virtue of revealing their inner core might we better understand our own.

- Foley Gallery

"Kent Rogowski: Bears," at Foley Gallery.



"Bear 11," 2003, C-Print, (20 x 16 inches).

"Bear 23," 2006, C-Print, (20 x 16 inches).

"Bear 34," 2003, C-Print, (20 x 16 inches).

"Bear 13," 2006, C-Print, (20 x 16 inches).

"Bear 34," 2006, C-Print, (20 x 16 inches), sleuth of five Bears through Foley Gallery.

"130+ years after Thomas Eakins portrayed a group of bloody surgeons removing a tumor from a patient's thigh in The Gross Clinic (oil on canvas), Kent Rogowski turns our emblems of childhood comfort inside out. One of Eakins most famous and successful paintings, The Gross Clinic was rejected by the jury of the 1876 Centennial exhibition as 'unsightly' and eventually sold to a medical school for the paltry sum of $200. Perhaps Mr. Rogowski should sell his pictures to a day care center."

- Alec Soth (Photographer)