the present tense

I think I’m obsessed with objects that don’t die—those that are brought back to life, transformed into something new while still keeping their essence, origin, and history. I was thinking about this a few days ago at the Art Center Sarasota while visiting PUSH, an exhibition by Keenan Perren, a local artist from Bradenton, Florida, born and raised in New Jersey.

In his work, the love for skateboarding goes beyond just riding a skateboard, doing tricks, or cruising through the streets. For Perren, a broken board can be something more. Art always shows us that anything can change, revealing the unexpected side of things.In his pieces, at its core, the skateboard remains a skateboard, but it also becomes a canvas, a painting surface, a memory of what it once was.

Skateboards, symbols of skateboarding, stay alive by transforming into art—painted, reshaped, and bearing witness to their own journey.

Their form changes, but their history remains. Perren’s painting-sculptures not only give new meaning to these objects but also capture the essence of skate culture. Everything comes together: a functional object becomes a symbol, an amulet—not through mere preservation, but through intervention and transformation. What is broken, what is discarded, is reborn.