Kala Fellowships are awarded annually to eight innovative artists working in printmaking, book arts, video and digital media. Fellowship artists are selected from a competitive field of applicants from the United States, South America, Europe, Australia and Asia. Recipient artists receive a financial award and a six-month residency at Kala’s studio facility followed by an exhibition of their new work. The Kala Gallery is proud to present the first of our two-part exhibition, Residency Projects, featuring work by our 2004-2005 Fellowship artists.
Jennifer Blazina’s mixed media narrative-based installations are created from combinations of self-portraits and appropriated family snap-shots. The portraits are reproduced as multiples and presented with a density of repeated images that suggests a highly fragmented memory of a distant past. Blazina’s pairing of portraits with materials such as steel, glass, resin, ink and satin, poetically reiterate ephemeral moments and personal history.
Audrey Chung’s El Gabilan Shuffle explores the structure of the ubiquitous high school yearbook. The Salinas High School 1950’s era yearbook, El Gabilan, serves as the basis for this engaging series of DVD loops that cycles through student classifications, portrait conventions, errors, disappearances, and omissions.
Anna Maltz always inserts a slightly disturbing sense of humor into her mélange of madcap projects. Combining odd elements of performance, photography, fiber arts and knitting, her work meshes the sophisticated with the decidedly homespun. Her focus on the body, appearance and identity takes the form of photographic portraits of family members in hand-knit “naked body” suits and sweaters bearing slogans in Braille.
Video artist Katherin McInnis presents Valencia Street, a pedestrian’s exploration of San Francisco’s Mission District, a neighborhood microcosm that reflects the profound social and economic changes of the last decade. Each shot of Valencia Street is six frames of video and simultaneous audio, an idiosyncratic time-lapse that reveals fragments of a subjective experience. A hybrid of photography and video, Valencia Street plays off the aesthetics of animation and digital editing with kaleidoscopic vibrancy.
Exhibition Dates: September 8 - October 15, 2005
Artists' Reception: Thursday, September 8, 6-8p.m.
Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Friday, 12-5:30pm; Saturday, 12-4:30pmAt Kala Art Institute Gallery
Kala Art Institute
1060 Heinz Ave
Berkeley, Ca 94710For More Information Contact:
Lauren Davies, Public Programs Manager,
lauren@kala.org , (510) 549-2977The second part of Residency Projects will present the work of Jennifer Blazina, Audrey Chung, Anna Maltz and Katherin McInnis from September 8 – October 15, 2005 at the Kala Gallery.
