The Making is A Re-Making
What are Worlds made of? “Not from nothing… Worldmaking starts from worlds already on hand: the making is a remaking.” Nelson Goodman (Ways of Worldmaking, 1978)
Kala Gallery is proud to present The Making is A Re-Makingfeaturing work by Adam Donnelly & David Janesko, Kevin Frances, Rachel Granofsky, Adrienne Heloise, Erin Colleen Johnson, Jesse Boardman Kauppila, Nance O’Banion, Farnaz Shadravan and Emma Spertus. The exhibition presents new work by artists who use materials and resources from everyday life to generate new worlds and systems. Objects, spaces or experiences can be used to create new worlds from old ones, transformed via new arrangements, compositions, re-purposing or other experimental methods creating an experience of unexpected and magical perceptional shifts.
Worlds are built from the worlds of our experience – whether it’s already experienced or imagined. The Making is A Re-Making explores new ways of worldmaking recreated from our everyday life — the spectacles of the mundane.
Adam Donnelly & David Janesko build site-specific cameras with materials that they can find in a given environment – driftwood, rocks, seaweeds, dirt, mud, and/or discarded tarps. The camera they create is large enough for one of them to crawl inside to hold the film. They become part of the both the landscape and camera. The resulting photograph is a document of the environment as well as a testament to their manipulation of the natural world. Adam received his MFA from The San Francisco Art Institute and his BA from the University of Delaware. His exhibitions include the Garner Center, Boston, Black Box Gallery, Portland, The Creative Center for Photography, Los Angeles, and more. David received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and his BS in Geosciences from Pennsylvania State University. He has exhibited his work at Rayko Photo Center, Queens Nails, San Francisco Art Institute in San Francisco as well as galleries in NYC and Los Angeles. He is currently a Graduate Fellow at the Headlands Center for the Arts.
Kevin Frances’ practice starts from his love of everyday objects and narrative making. In his current project, New Apartment, New City, he constructs a scale model of the interior of an apartment, and creates a fictional character to inhabit it. His project expands to include a book of photography based on the model and a series of woodblock prints made from the photographs of the model. His woodblock prints become flat and more abstract, and yet since they totally erase any evidence of the fictional origin, they become paradoxically more believable than the original photographs. Kevin received his MFA in printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design and his BA from the University of California, Davis. His work has been shown at the International Print Center New York, David Krut Projects in New York, and the Highpoint Center for Printmaking in Minneapolis.
Rachel Granofsky tailors her materials to individual environments to transgress boundaries and modify structures into liminal space. Through the positioning of sculptural forms, she creates subtle spatial distortions that belong to the fixed point of view of her camera’s lens. Paralleling the flat surface of the print, elements are arranged to collapse perspective, blurring distinctions between mediums in the final photograph. Her work challenges assumptions of perception and clarity of photographic representation to raise questions about the difference between how things are known and how things are perceived. Rachel received her MFA from California College of the Arts and her BFA from Pratt Institute. Her work has been exhibited at venues nationally and internationally including the Canada Council for the Arts, Canadian Center for Architecture and the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, CA.
Adrienne Heloise presents her new series Security Guardsin which she uses the interior patterns of security envelopes to create figures and symbols based on Napoleonic soldiers and emblems of martial power. She uses envelopes that typically protect financial and personal information transforming these patterned envelopes into a new medium to create icons of militaristic protection and hidden sexuality. Adrienne received her BA in Psychology at Humboldt State University, CA. Her exhibitions include Southern Exposure and Root Division in San Francisco, Berkeley Art Center, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art and ProArts in Oakland. She is currently an Artist Fellow at de Young Museum.
Something magical happens in Erin Colleen Johnson’svideo piece, Hole. In a refrigerator-sized cardboard box she talks with Tom Johnson, an ice fisherman in Minnesota as he guides her in chiseling her own hole and letting the light in. As their conversations unfolds, their seemingly disparate circumstances merge in unexpected ways. Erin’s work explores how simple objects such as cardboard boxes can act as sites for conversations about empathy, hope and desire. Erin holds an MFA in Art Practice from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BA in Art and Community Organizing from Warren Wilson College. Her work has been exhibited in venues such as the Berkeley Art Museum, Southern Exposure, Adobe Books Backroom Gallery, and the Zero1 Biennial. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Video and Photography at the University of West Georgia.
Jesse Boardman Kauppila creates alternative narratives to investigate abstract systems that disconnect us from the origins of socio-political products and activities. To understand these abstract systems, he develops his own system through the use of photography, printmaking, performance and sculptural elements. For his recent project I.O.P. I.E.D. (Inside Out Printer Improvised Explosive Device), he explodes printer toner onto glass plates. Then he uses these plates as negatives to create photographic prints. The end photographs resemble exploding stars. By contrasting the processes and materials he uses with the resulting art objects, he creates a dissonance between what we see and where it comes from. Jesse received his BA in Art History from Reed College and he is currently a MFA candidate at Carnegie Mellon. His exhibitions include Rayko Photo Center, PLAySPACE Gallery at California College of the Arts, Silverman Gallery, The Luggage Store Gallery and more.
Nance O’Banion presents The Tablet Project, her life long work since 1997. Her exploration of dreams and daydreams becomes the main body of this project, which includes approximately 500 small wood painted and drawn panels along with related book works. Her tablets weave sleeping realms and everyday realities together, and create unexpected narratives. It is magical storytelling of the most amazing kind. Nance received her BA and MA from the University of California, Berkeley. Recognized internationally since the l970s for her innovative work in textiles, paper and book arts, her works are included in major museum collections in Europe, Japan, Canada, and the US. She has taught in the US, Europe, and Canada and is currently a Professor and Co-Chair of Printmaking Department at California College of the Arts.
Farnaz Shadravan, an artist and dentist, turns our everyday appliances into magnificent objects of worship. She engraved four full-size bathtubs copying master woodcut prints by German printmaker Albrecht Dürer from The Revelation of St. John (Apocalypse) series. Using dental tools, she carefully scrapes away the porcelain surface of the bathtubs revealing the metal structure underneath. She dedicates this project to her young Afghan friends who work on the street in Tehran. Farnaz was born and raised in Iran. She was trained as a manuscript illuminator of the Koran. She received her BFA from University of Utah and BS from School of Dentistry at University of California, San Francisco. She also has extensive training in printmaking and sculpture at San Francisco Art Institute and private workshops. She is currently practicing dentistry in the Bay Area.
Emma Spertus investigates the varied ways in which the act of photography or the resulting images are used as a starting point of her sculptural forms. She experiments with architectural elements, space, objects, illusions, and resemblance exploring the given space. Her sculptures play with the spatial qualities of representation and activate uncanny cinematic dialogues between objects and spaces. Emma received her MFA from Hunter College, NY and her BA from Macalester College, Saint Paul. She has exhibited her work at venues such as Important Projects and Transmission Gallery in Oakland, Stairwell’s Project, San Francisco, White Columns, New York and many more. She is a Founder and Co-manager of artist studio, Real Time and Space.
Please join us for a Gallery Conversation with the Artists on Saturday, November 2 at 2:00 pm. The event is free of charge and open to the public.
For more information, contact Mayumi Hamanaka, Kala Gallery Manager, mayumi@kala.org or (510) 841-7000 ex 201.