Katherine Desjardins:  Solo Project: A Provisional Proposition

A site-specific drawing/performance at the intersection of art, meat, and commerce.

April 2012

Guerilla Truck Show 2012

Corner of Fulton Market & Aberdeen Streets, West Loop, Chicago IL

June 12, 2012 - 5:30-9:30 pm.

Our 17 ft U-Haul truck wrapped in Hebru Brantley’s ‘mural on canvas’ will become a temporary ‘mobile art gallery’ for this one night only!  Fans of graffiti and street art will love this site-specific exhibition curated by Kasia Kay that will feature artworks by Katherine Desjardins, Ben Young and live painting by Hebru Brantley. The featured artists endeavor to depict the underside of urban experience and their protagonists are triumphantly defiant with raw emotion.  In addition, we will present ‘Immediate raw construction creations’ by Tricia Thomas /TSR Design.

The Guerrilla Truck Show coincides with NeoCon - North America's largest design exposition and conference for commercial interiors and architecture. It takes place at The Merchandise Mart in Chicago, June 11th -13th. http://www.neocon.com

guer.ril.la (ger ril’e) - a member of a small independent group of product, furniture designers & artisans that band together to provide an innovative venue to vent their ideas and creativity.

April 2012- Katherine Desjardins:  Solo Project: A Provisional Proposition

A site-specific drawing/performance at the intersection of art, meat, and commerce.

Erika Harrsch - Under One Sky

ArtHamptons 2012 - Kevin Berlin - Performance "Tiger Training for Beginners"

November 8 - December 8, 2012

Opening reception: Friday, November 9, 6-8pm.

CHICAGO, IL - Kasia Kay Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of “Under One Sky”, the gallery’s first solo exhibition for Erika Harrsch. As a multi-media artist, Harrsch uses a diverse grouping of materials to express her deeper message and exhibit a playful yet thought -provoking atmosphere for the viewer. Her newer works consist of sculptural clouds, kites, mixed-media collages, paintings entomological boxes, and a plethora of other fascinating creations coming together to compose a symphony of visual stimuli. 

The butterfly is a reoccurring motif in Harrsch’s works. Most of her butterflies are constructed from images of various recreated currencies. It seems her winged creations carry with them her message of a balance between nature and our modern global economy. With the Butterflies as a recurrent symbol, Harrsch creates parallel realities of values; where these banknotes flutter, specimen-prints of international currency are presented either as animated monetized Lepidoptera or as extinct specimens ready for inspection. 

Harrsch’s collection contains traces of a wide variety of emotions and topics. Some are fantastical and tumultuous; others are tranquil and insightful, while the next may make blatant political statements mixed with a serene landscape. The gallery will be transformed, filled of new energies. Her work is an experience not to be missed. 

One of Harrsch’s most recent commissioned installations for the Eaton Corporation manages to again displace the balance of nature and economics, with the circling trail made by each of her individually handmade, paper currency butterflies. Each butterfly seems so delicate yet substantial, and there is a sense that at any moment one might decide to fly off the wall. 

“Erika Harrsch’s work proves that borders do not exist when it comes to artistic creation.” Art Nexus 

Born in Mexico City, Erika Harrsch has lived and worked in Mexico, Italy, Germany and New York. Her image-making tools include painting, photography, video and a scenario building based on elements in artificial and natural environments, which find expression in the form of installations and three dimensional photographic works. Her work has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions at galleries and museums in Mexico, USA, Brasil, Argentina, Korea, China, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Spain, UK, Poland, Turkey and Syria. She has participated in several Art Biennials including Fokus Lodz Biennale, Poland 2010, Beijing 798 Biennale 2009, 5th International Media Art Biennale-MediaCity Seoul 2008. Her work has been presented in museum such as the Whitney Museum of American Art-NY, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Göteborgs Konstmuseum-Gothenburg Sweden, Musée de la Photographie a Charleroi-Bélgium, Seoul Museum of Art-Korea. Harrsch has developed a multidisciplinary practice and has taken part in multimedia festivals and residencies worldwide, working in collaboration with the multidisciplinary company VisionIntoArt, cellist Jeffrey Zeigler of the Kronos Quartet and acclaimed composer Philip Glass. 

Elisa Johns: Palisades

October 11 - November 3, 2012

Opening reception: October 12, 6-8PM.

CHICAGO, IL - Kasia Kay Art Projects is pleased to announce “Palisades”, the gallery’s first solo exhibition for Elisa Johns. Working with oil on canvas, Johns draws influence and inspiration from the rugged, pristine landscape of California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains, where she spends her summers backpacking.

While depicting the landscape as harsh and unyielding, Johns also incorporates elements of sensuality and tenderness, effectively creating a narrative interplay between the masculine and feminine duality of nature - a source of both pleasure and pain, simultaneously sympathetic and pitiless.

In these paintings, Johns’ panoramic stone peaks contend with ethereal female forms and become characters themselves.  Powerful, masculine palisades intertwine with delicate strokes contextualizing the female form. Mountains, set within a dream-like void of large open spaces, evoke the otherworldliness of epic fantasy. Both haunting and lyrical, Johns’ paintings delve deep into the sublime mystery of the western high Sierra.

“There is a perfect balance of misery and ecstasy in the mountains, and an inherent risk, the knowledge that the landscape is more powerful than you are. It is as though this mix of pain and pleasure is the only way to truly feel and experience it.”          

- Elisa Johns

Elisa Johns is a Los Angeles based contemporary painter who received her MFA from the Claremont Graduate University, and her BFA from the University of California, San Diego. Johns was featured in the 2004 and 2007’s New American Paintings, in 2008 she was chosen to participate in LA. Potential, at Hangar 7, Salzburg, Austria. She has received critical acclaim from publications including White Hot Magazine, Beautiful/ Decay magazine, and in Art in America for her 2009 solo show at Walker Contemporary, Boston. Johns most recent solo shows include Devotion is Enough at Skew Gallery in Calgary and Huntress at Mike Weiss Gallery in New York.