OPENING RECEPTION
FRIDAY, JANUARY 11, 2019
7:00 - 10:00 PM
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
EXHIBITION RUNS THROUGH MARCH 1
CONTEMPLATIVE JANUARY 11 - MARCH 1, 2019 | KAI LIN ART is pleased to announce our first exhibition of 2019: CONTEMPLATIVE (January 11th - March 1, 2019) featuring the artwork of artists: Greg Noblin, Todd Anderson, Patrick Heagney, Valerie Zimany and Blockhead (Chris Skeene). CONTEMPLATIVE features an intriguing collection of image-based artworks and sculptures that entice viewers for quiet and peaceful moments of reflection.
Long time resident artist of the gallery, Greg Noblin returns with a new series of his signature panelist works. Noblin works to incorporate layers of meaning, symbolism and texture in his artworks through a multistep process of photo collage and panel printing. The final works are a combination of surrealism, photography and landscape supported by organic and inorganic structures. The whimsical and sometimes surreal images offer a glimpse of shared human experiences of struggle, joy, successes and failures. These worlds are a place where nothing is impossible, perception is everything, and reality is what you create.
Master printmaker Todd Anderson’s practice involves long-term, team-based projects that investigate ecological changes to wilderness areas caused by global warming. Anderson, who traditionally works in the ancient practice of woodblock printing, has developed a new experimental photogravure process for the works of CONTEMPLATIVE. Anderson is committed to preserving the romantic beauty of the natural world and at the same time drawing attention to the dire and uncertain futures of these landscapes and ecologies. Anderson returns to the gallery with a new series of work featuring the stunning beauty of America’s trees and the devastating impact of the mountain pine beetle.
Patrick Heagney is an award winning commercial and editorial photographer who has been exhibiting his work nationally since 2001. His latest body of work combines sculpture and photography to create whimsical fairytale-like worlds out of cut paper. Each piece in this series uses the setting and characters in it to tell a parable about love and relationships.
Valerie Zimany examines complex relationships between the East and West, nature and technology, and intimate and public worlds through the lens of her American background and extended education in Japan. Borrowed and appropriated images from the histories of art, nature, and society transform surfaces, and suggest symbolic intersections between these different cultures. Distantly familiar archetypes from 1970’s electronics and design, traditional textile patterns, vintage enameled china, and manga or graffiti overlap to create seemingly improbable combinations. Narratives stretch over forms evocative of botanicals and the body, and are often colored with uneasy sensuality or aggressiveness, yet allure with voluptuous softness. Small vignettes hide in crevices as memories do in the corners of the mind. By clashing colors, forms, and imagery she forces relationships or questions the compatibility, and parallel a feeling of wandering out of place at just the right time.
Blockhead is a pseudonym invented by Chris Skeene in 2011 as a way to explore the thriving free art scene in Atlanta. Inspired by his collection of Pez dispensers and blind box art toys (such as figures by be@rbrick or Kidrobot), Chris uses blockheads to bring variety to the repetition of a singular form. Though much of the inspiration for his work are from machine-made items, blockheads are each hand-carved and painted, thereby highlighting the individuality and uniqueness of each piece. Chris also extends the unique nature of the figures by inviting collaborators to bring their own styles to the blank canvas of a carved blockhead.
CONTEMPLATIVE will be on exhibit through Friday, March 1st, 2019.
