Residency Projects: 2006-2007 Kala Fellowship Exhibition Part III
Kala Fellowships are awarded annually to eight innovative artists working in installation, video, digital media, printmaking, and book arts. Fellowship artists are selected from a competitive field of applicants from the United States, 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 third of our three-part exhibition series, Residency Projects, featuring work by our 2006-2007 Fellowship artists.
Karen McCoy’s video installation Light and Shadow explores how we experience particular places, and conditions, by amplifying and intensifying ordinary phenomena. McCoy examines combinations of shadow, light, wind and their interplay on surfaces such as walls, floors and plants with elements that are so woven into the fabric of the everyday that they generally go unnoticed. The pieces in the Light and Shadow series were made during a number of long walks and the subtle observations encourage contemplation and careful listening for the viewer. Karen McCoy typically works in sculpture and has an extensive resume of public works and gallery exhibitions that explore the relationship between nature and culture, the body, and language systems. She created this project at Kala while on sabbatical from her teaching position at the Kansas City Art Institute.
Daniel Ross also addresses issues involving nature and landscape from an extremely different vantage point. Ross’ view of nature focuses on issues of genetic modification, climate change and the ever-blurring boundaries between natural and synthetic matter. Represented by a series of hybrid wall-mounted works, Ross tips his hat to the craft of découpage on wood slabs that intentionally reference a kitschy depiction of nature. His oversized, hyper-artificial works involve an unusual combination of processes and materials that mesh digital images with painting and sculpture. Ross also adds a synthetic shimmer to his technically dazzling works through a process of inkjet print transfer and holographic foil. Perhaps it makes sense that Bay Area artist Daniel Ross grew up in Florida.
Bay Area artist James Sansing explores a landscape of a different variety; the interior landscape of the adolescent mind. During a covert “breaking and entering” project that lasted nearly ten years, Sansing compulsively photographed psychiatric ledgers found in a crumbling abandoned juvenile hall. The ledgers containing the counselors’ daily hand-written commentary on the incarcerated adolescents never removed from the building when it was closed in the 1970’s. A number of the books found lying open on the floor were covered with ink stains and mold growth in Rorschach patterns, adding to the psychological impact of the discovery. For his exhibition at Kala, Sansing has created both digital prints and a video animation from the ledger pages. The video work presents the process of looking through a five hundred page ledger book of hand-written notes as a digital flip-book representing a period in the life an individual.
Previous Residency Projects exhibitions for Kala’s 2006 Fellowship artists included Freddy Chandra, Su-Chen Hung, Packard Jennings. Scott Kildall and Stephanie Syjuco.
Exhibitions are free and open to the public.