Title: Residency Projects I
Location: Kala Gallery
Artists’ Reception: Thursday, July 15, 6-8pm
Exhibition Dates: July 15 – August 21, 2010
Film Screenings: Screenings of documentary films by Bassem Yousri on Wednesday August 11, 7:00 pm and Saturday, August 21, 2:00 pm
Description: New work by Val Britton, Chris Duncan, Katy Higgins, Laura Paulini and Bassem Yousri
Kala Fellowships are awarded annually to nine innovative artists working in printmaking, photography, book arts, installation, video and digital media. Fellowship artists are selected from a competitive field of applicants from North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Australia and Asia. Recipient artists receive a financial award and up to six-months 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 series, Residency Projects, featuring work by our 2009-2010 Fellowship artists. The Kala Directors in association with juror Larry Rinder, Director of Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, selected the artists.
Residency Projects II will open on September 2, 2010 with new works by Kala Fellows Terry Berlier, Jeff Hantman, Sean McFarland and Ranu Mukherjee.
Val Britton creates expansively collaged works on paper that draw on the language of maps as a personal metaphor for searching. In an effort to connect with her deceased father, a long-haul truck driver, Britton explores road maps of the United States as she imbues her abstract work with a sense of visually dynamic movement. Using hand-cut paper shapes, the printed and drawn works are assembled into a sculptural collage that hovers between two and three dimensions. Her work has been widely exhibited both nationally and internationally in addition to residencies at Ucross, Jentel, Oregon College of Art and Craft and Recology in San Francisco. Val is the recipient of a 2010 Pollock-Krasner Grant.
Chris Duncan presents a site-specific multi-media installation titled The Sun. During his residency at Kala, Duncan has expanded his studio practice to include a series of collaborative/improvisational music sessions, audio recordings, photographs and paintings. His installation will include elements of these new works in addition to a large-scale “sun burst” wall drawing assembled from string. Duncan is also the co-creator of the art based zine project, HOT AND COLD. His work has been widely exhibited widely both nationally and internationally and is represented by Baer-Ridgeway Exhibitions in San Francisco and Jeff Bailey Gallery in New York.
Katy Higgins presents photographs from her series titled Empty Exhibit, an examination of zoological exhibits designed to allow people to observe animals in a facsimile of their native habitats. In Higgins’ photographs, these educational exhibits are startlingly empty of animal life, drawing attention to the artifice of these fabricated environments. Based in New York, Higgins received her MFA from Rutgers University and has exhibited her works in both photography and video at numerous venues in New York and Chicago. In September, the Empty Exhibit series will be included in Hyperreal World: Landscape as Commodity, at Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts in Tallahassee.
Laura Paulini’s residency at Kala provided an opportunity to focus on a drawing practice that continues to inform her labor-intensive geometric abstract paintings. Transforming her drawings to engravings on copper plates, Paulini’s print works link the physical, tactile qualities of the print media to the meticulous handcrafted qualities found in her abstract ink drawings and egg tempera paintings. Paulini received her MFA from Mills College and has been included in exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles and the Bay Area. Her work is represented by Eleanor Harwood Gallery in San Francisco.
Bassem Yousri’s multi-media works explore his personal investigation into contemporary Egyptian identity that straddles religious fundamentalism and cultural Westernization with a relationship to the artistic grandeur of a culture rooted in history. Working with large-scale wall drawings, objects and video, Yousri’s installation at Kala is inspired by the story telling qualities of ancient Egyptian murals. Additionally, there will be screenings of two documentary videos by Bassem Yousri titled Keep Recording and Still Recording. Filmed in Cairo and Philadelphia, these complimentary works challenge cultural stereotypes by juxtaposing random footage of friends with street exchanges involving passing strangers. Yousri came to the United States from Cairo as the recipient of Fulbright Grant to continue his studies in painting, video and fabric arts. In Philadelphia, he studied at Drexel University and received his MFA from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art. This is his first exhibition on the West Coast.
In addition to exhibitions in the Kala Gallery, On View: New Work from Kala will continuously feature works on paper by artists affiliated with Kala Art Institute. A diverse selection of works available for purchase can be seen throughout our new facility including the Mercy & Roger Smullen Print and Media Study Center.
Kala Fellowship Artists’ Talk: Sean McFarland and Genevieve Quick
Title: Kala Fellowship Artists’ Talk: Sean McFarland and Genevieve Quick
Location: Kala Gallery
Date: Thursday, July 29, 2010
Start Time: 7pm
Description: Kala’s Fellowship program includes a series of artiststalks by our current Fellows. Sean McFarland is the last speaker in our 2009-2010 Fellowship artist program. Sean will be joined by Genevieve Quick. Genevieve was the recipient of an Honorable Mention Award for her outstanding work which provided her with a month long studio residency in 2010.
Sean McFarland works in complex photographic processes that draw on an extensive archive of landscape images that are reassembled into visually mysterious composite images. Sean was honored with a 2009 Baum Award to Emerging American Photographers which included an exhibition at SF Camerawork. He was the recipient of the James D. Phelan Award in Photography in 2005. His work has been presented at White Columns in New York, San Jose Museum of Art, Headlands Center for the Arts, Marx and Zavattero Gallery and Eleanor Harwood Gallery.
Genevieve Quick’s work draws on the history of image making devices from the Victorian period to more modern satellites and space telescopes. Her work ranges from elaborate three-dimensional viewing devices constructed from foam-core, paper, dowel rods, mirrors and lenses to highly technical drawings of space telescopes and satellites. Her work has been presented at Southern Exposure, the Walter and Mc Bean Galleries at San Francisco Art Institute, Gallery Paule Anglim, Villa Montalvo, Headlands Center for the Arts, the Lab, and AOV. Genevieve is also a curator and a regular contributing writer for Art Practical.
The talk is free of charge and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.