Unlikely Combinations With VSCO Montage
Kalen Hollomon creates juxtaposition and humor by layering videos and images, old and new.
“Art has a limitless capacity to provoke investigation from the viewer,” says Kalen Hollomon, a multimedia artist based in New York City. His work is an inventive stream of visual provocations, emphasizing collage to bring together unlikely combinations of people, places, and objects.
With a creative process driven by curiosity, Kalen explores his imagination to see and reinterpret the world through new perspectives. This self-exploration led to surprising personal discovery through VSCO Montage, VSCO’s newest video storytelling feature.
“In creating my Montage, I felt closer to my family,” he says. “I realized we’re all more similar than I thought. It helped me make connections between memories that were previously singular, realizing a larger, more dynamic story of my past.”
This Is VSCO Montage: Combine Videos, Images, and Shapes
Questioning norms and surfacing contradictions are threads that Kalen carries from his parents’ experience to his own — in his life and in his work.
“My mom ran away from home at 15 and became a Buddhist hippie studying at Naropa College in Boulder, Colorado, where she met my father,” he shares. “He was a reclusive painter from South Georgia. When they met, they were each questioning society and seeking alternatives from the status quo.”
Kalen believes his own penchant for curiosity can be attributed to his nontraditional upbringing.
“My parents encouraged me to think independently and question the world.” he says. “I’ve taken those ideas into my art practice.”
Collage has been a part of Kalen’s life since he can remember. As a child, he was inspired by his grandmother, who created homemade scrapbooks for and about him. He largely attributes the humorous lens through which he creates much of his art to the women in his family.
“I was raised around women with peculiar senses of humor,” he says. “My mom has a dry delivery paired with an endearing earnestness, and my grandmother is a former clown and sign painter.”
Kalen’s ability to layer unrelated elements in a variety of ways brings juxtaposition and humor to his art through subtle manipulation.
“When put together, opposing elements create an energy that becomes exaggerated in the company of the other,” Kalen says.
“The real successes are when a small connection between opposites is exposed where previously unseen,” he continues. “It’s about finding that tiny bit of common ground or connection that I never thought existed.”
Unorthodox compositions invite Kalen to both question his own point of view and offer a new one for viewers to consider.
“Unlikely combinations allow me to investigate subjects from opposing angles,” he says. “By removing elements with known connotations from their original context, and pairing them with opposite but equally stirring elements, each singular piece is given new breath and meaning.”
Kalen continues to explore the dimensions of his life and his past through art. As he incorporates both the old and new in his work, he brings the layers of his story to life in unexpected ways, gaining new insight into the present moment.
Create unlikely combinations of your own and share your story using VSCO Montage.
