Evidence for Contact: Ken Grimes, 1993-2021

A singularly interstellar journey into the work of a visionary figure in outsider art, featuring an introduction by Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI).The paintings of Ken Grimes are strikingly honest, deceptively simple, and decidedly interstellar. Over several decades, Grimes has developed his singular style—using text, numbers, outer space iconography, and geometric shapes painted primarily in stark black and white—to prompt his audience to consider the possibilities and implications of alien contact with earth. Influenced by the proliferation of sci-fi media in his youth, Grimes has also continued to be moved by popular culture, a motif which intermingles with his interest in outer space in ways both earnest and irreverent. Showcasing art from Grimes’s long career, Evidence for Contact catalogs the endless variations on a theme produced by an absolutely unique painter during a lifetime devoted to the mysteries of extraterrestrial life.