new exhibition KALA ART INSTITUTE
Exhibition Title: Residency Projects II
New work by Terry Berlier, Jeff Hantman,
Sean McFarland and Ranu Mukherjee
Artists: Terry Berlier
Jeff Hantman
Sean McFarland
Ranu Mukherjee
Exhibition Dates: September 2 – October 9, 2010
Artists’ Reception: Thursday, September 2, 6-8pm
Gallery Address: 2990 San Pablo, Berkeley, CA 94702
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Friday, Noon – 5:30pm;
Saturday, Noon – 4:30pm
Kala Fellowships are awarded annually to nine innovative artists working in printmaking, photography, book arts, installation, video and digital media. Fellowship artists are selected from a competitive field of applicants from North America, 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 first of our two-part exhibition series, Residency Projects, featuring work by our 2009-2010 Fellowship artists. The Kala Directors in association with juror Larry Rinder, Director of Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, selected the artists. Residency Projects I was presented earlier this summer with new works by Kala Fellows Val Britton, Chris Duncan, Katy Higgins, Laura Paulini and Bassem Yousri.
Terry Berlier is an interdisciplinary artist who creates sound sculpture and installations that are both kinetic and interactive. Her work often focuses around everyday objects, ideas of nonplace/place and queer practice. Terry will be presenting Remain Human: The Slatter’s Court Project, a 43 minute video that documents the lives of residents in
an outdated auto camp that has been designated “blight” by the liberal town of Davis, California. Also included in the exhibition is NFS, an interactive video installation that explores the lives of a San Francisco lesbian couple from the 1930’s. A key element of the work is a set of window shutters that open and close in relationship to the viewer. The fluctuating movement of the shutters either reveals or obscures vintage lesbian porn and an alternate film loaded with latent homoerotic undercurrents. Terry received the 2008 New Visions of California Award that provided a residency at the Exploratorium. Her work has been presented in numerous national and international exhibitions. Terry is currently a Professor of Sculpture at Stanford University.
Jeff Hantman creates three-dimensional mixed media works that combine photography, appropriated images and screen-printing on scrap plywood. The wood has been retrieved from local construction sites or collected from the side of the road. These salvaged sections of plywood are often covered with oil stains and weathered paint indicating age, neglect and the passage of time out in the elements. Jeff meticulously reassembles the cast-off plywood into constructions that suggest fragments of architectural structures. These elaborately curved plywood structures are layered with screen-printed imagery. The resulting works poetically suggest faded memories of a distant past. Jeff was an artist in residence last year at Djerassi. His work is also currently on view at the Barra Windows in Berkeley.
Sean McFarland works in a variety of photographic processes that examine our relationship to the landscape with particular attention on alterations to the urban environment including the construction of buildings, roads and parks. Presented in the exhibition are works from Pictures of the Earth, a photographic series created from an extensive archive of landscape images. These images include original photographs created by the artist plus landscapes found in print and collected from the Internet. The source photographs are re-photographed and assembled into visually mysterious composite images that are presented as intimately scaled Polaroids. Sean was honored with a 2009 Baum Award to Emerging American Photographers that included an exhibition at SF Camerawork. He was the recipient of the James D. Phelan Award in Photography in 2005. His work has been presented at White Columns in New York, San Jose Museum of Art, Marx and Zavattero Gallery and Eleanor Harwood Gallery.
Ranu Mukherjee creates hybrid works in video animation and drawing to depict abstract forms of nomadic living that are both historical and contemporary. Included in the exhibition is a two-sided video projection. Projected on one side Indian Picture – from Ganga to Jupiter depicts a reel of audiotape from a 1957 recording of the planet Jupiter created by the artist’s scientist father as it floats down the Ganges River. On the opposite side European Picture – a neo-romantic delay: a field of particles refers to the recent Icelandic volcanic eruption as a cloud of ash covers a procession of luggage and people sleeping amidst a swirling particle storm. Also included is Everyday Futurism, a salon style presentation of screen-printed phrases overlaid on ink paintings that explore the tension between the public/private self. Ranu’s work has recently been presented internationally and in San Francisco at The Luggage Store, New Langton Arts, The Lab and Noma’s Gallery Videoh0le project space. Ranu teaches video arts at California College of the Arts.
