Residency Projects: 2005-2006 Kala Fellowship Exhibition, Part I
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 2005-2006 Fellowship artists.
Working in a combination of film and installation Keith Evans presents new works that might be best described as “wonder devices.” His idiosyncratic cinematic systems are assembled by hand from a combination of old film projectors, televisions and sound devices. Rather like kinetic models of alternate or imaginary solar systems, the devices suggest the movement of bodies and objects through spatial relationships. Evans’ mysterious works display the phenomenon and the idea of cinema as a technological system, one that is unfixed and accreting, neither nostalgic nor utopian.
Since her recent graduation from Mills College MFA program, Liz Hickok has garnered much attention for her architectural models made from Jell-O. Undoubtedly, working in one of the most ephemeral of sculpture materials, Hickok creates molded scale models made from Jell-O that depict San Francisco’s highly recognizable architecture. Ranging from The Transamerica pyramid to stately Victorian homes, the shimmering miniature buildings emit an oddly ethereal glow and are at once humorous and ironic given life on the fault line here in the Bay Area. In addition to sculpture, Hickok also works in photography. For Residency Projects she will be presenting a series of large format photographs representing both the molds and the quivering Jell-O architecture.
Bay Area artist Jeff Kao also explores architecture, yet in a very different manner. Kao doesn’t subscribe to the notion that a “man’s home is his castle.” With an obsessive interest in military iconography and imagery derived from war movies, Kao’s new work seems to suggest that a “man’s home is his bunker.” And perhaps his bunker is about to be over run by the enemy. With a deft combination of digital print and drawings, Kao visually presents his enemies as the burdens of home repairs, maintenance and domestic upkeep.
Like many young artists Daniel Tierney was raised on video games, but the similarities probably end there. Tierney’s obsession with the implied space found in digitally fabricated computer game landscapes form the basis for his hard to categorize artwork. With equal parts drawing, painting and digital photography, he collages together complex layers of images and crumpled paper to form his over-the-top installations. Tierney who received a Goldie Award from the Bay Guardian and was also presented at the Headlands last year, describes his new work at Kala as “ a model that imagines ten thousand pairs of running shoes, an unknown and variable amount with their shoelaces tied together running an obstacle course of cardboard pixels and paper flag poles.”
The second part of Residency Projects will present the work of Miriam Dym, Gary Nakamoto, Sasha Petrenko and Tracey Snelling from September 7 – October 14, 2006 at the Kala Gallery.
Exhibitions are free and open to the public.