Patty Nason © 2008

Cosmo has been an artist, inventor, and merry-maker for more than two decades.   Born Dan Grupp in New York City in 1963, Cosmo spent his early years being exposed to the art world and ‘happenings’ of the emerging Soho art scene of the 70’s.  As an avid inventor, Cosmo has worked in a number of mediums over the 24 years that he has been creating art and pushing the boundaries of what we think of as possible. He has continually defied convention with his commitment to seeing beyond what others see.

Cosmo studied physics as an undergraduate at Cornell University, where he was awarded the Hartmann Prize for innovation and insight in his experiments. He went on to receive a PhD in physics from the University of Pennsylvania. As an experimental scientist, he developed the ability to build just about anything, becoming a skilled machinist and electronics engineer. While in graduate school, he also won First Prize in a recipe competition. Leaving academia in the late 90’s to pursue his inventions, he became a leader in nanotechnology in Silicon Valley, holding a dozen patents. After a highly successful turn as a director of R&D, Cosmo left Silicon Valley and the world of scientific invention to pursue his art and his spiritual practice full time in 2005.

Cosmo’s mediums have varied greatly over the years, starting out in wood and metal. In the last decade he has created clothing using Saran wrap, duct tape, and found objects, such as antique couch springs.  These fashions combined industrial and mass-produced materials with a purely zany sense of fun.

Cosmo loves his art to be highly interactive. From his beanie baby launcher, which sends a cloud of beanie baby toys a hundred feet in the air, to his interactive fire-breathing installation that allows people to breathe fire with no safety risk using edible ingredients from the supermarket, he always brings his strong sense of playfulness into his creations. His most recent creations of Ultrakitsch demonstrate his ability to help us see the world in new and compelling ways. His commentary on modern culture is at once self-referentially ironic and also a sheer delight.

Cosmo is at his best when he uses his artistic sensibilities to make us smile, to revision the world around us, and to help us to see things in a truly new way.

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Cosmo Kichman info@ultrakitsch.com (415) 678-9468