Notions of Wilderness
curated by LiveBox

Vision 12 at Kasia Kay Art Projects

July 13th - July 28th

opening night July 13 6-9PM

two debuts for VISION 12: "Passive Erschliessung” by (art)n and “Hastabryot” kinetic sculpture by Joseph Kohnke.

Plus Currently on view: Notions of Wilderness

 

Hastabryot, 2007
Joseph Kohnke

Kohnke is interested in conversions, the expressive shift that occurs when inanimate objects give the characteristics of life.

This artificial plant wilts in response to an approaching viewer. The movement occurs only in the areas of the plant that are directly in front of the viewer.

Notions of Wilderness

 

June 1-July 28, 2007
Opening Reception June 1st, 6-9 pm

1044 W Fulton Market St, Chicago, IL 60613
312-492-8828

Exhibiting Artists:
Adam Chapman
Kim Curtis
Kim Dorland
Howard Fonda
Carla Gannis
Claudia Hart
Jodie Jacobi
Heather Lyon
Chris Oakley
Julia Oldham
Dominika Skutnik
(art)n collaboration Gerhard Mantz, Ellen Sandor, and Chris Kemp

The word wilderness is derived from the notion of wildness; uncultivated, uninhabited, in other words without human modification. The social and political realities of “nature verses economics” makes defining wilderness in the 21st Century ever more elusive. What is “wild”, what can be called “wilderness”, what is the measure of human “influence” that defines wildness?

Conceptions of wilderness have been important subjects for visual artists throughout history. Notions of Wilderness includes artists deploying multiple mediums to uncover their context of wildness.

Exhibition highlights:

Chris Oakley’s “Sight/Seeing video installation explores the commodification of the wild as typified in the modern safari (i.e. “seeing” through a camcorder viewfinder, through the windscreen of a bus).

 

Adam Chapman’s new media installation “Legible Nature: Fate is an Afterthought”, models the flight patterns and physical movements of Atlantic Grey Gulls, which are altered to periodically converge and form letters. These letters slowly spell out poems from the Manyoshu, 8th century Japanese poems.

 

Claudia Hart's Timegarden" is a one-hour 3D animation. The second in a series of "Timegardens"; a camera revolves 360º from the center of a circular walled garden, like a clock. Four time spans are represented simultaneously. Flowerbeds cycle from spring to fall; trees cycle from spring to winter, and the dome of the sky moves from dawn to dusk.

 

Howard Fonda’s tree paintings are ambiguous; are they scenes of a bleak winter or the aftermath of some human intervention? They seem to ponder why we both revere nature and taint it?

 

Julia Oldham translates invertebrate rituals into choreography that she performs and films. The resulting performance videos are concerned with playful anthropomorphization, using dance to bridge species.