CARLA GANNIS: THE GARDEN OF EMOJI DELIGHTS CHICAGO
The Garden of Emoji Delights
Digital pigment print, 8.5 x 21 in., 2013.
Reception for the artist: Friday Oct 24th, 6-8pm
The event is free and open to the public.
Chicago, IL - Kasia Kay Art Projects is proud to announce the opening of Carla Gannis’s third solo exhibition with the gallery entitled: Garden of Emoji Delights. This is in tandem with The Garden of Emoji Delights, New York at TRANSFER Gallery.
Carla Gannis’s work examines the narrativity of 21st century representational technologies and questions the hybrid nature of identity, where virtual and real embodiments of self diverge and intersect.
The exhibition is an installation of a large scale triptych, which comprises digitally collaged emoji symbols and animated characters into Hieronymus Bosch’s painting THE GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS, (1500-1505), along with a small 3-D printed sculpture entitled ESCAPE POD, a collaboration between EVERETT KANE and GANNIS that explores the theatrical poetries of the modern domicile. The exhibition will also include one-of-a-kind digital drawings by Gannis.
In The Garden of Emoji Delights, Carla Gannis contextualizes Emoji within the iconographic lineage of the works of Hieronymus Bosch, re-inscribing the third panel of his triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights, by using the new secular, pop vocabulary of signs and digital symbols.
These symbols are as pervasive now as religious symbology was in the 15th and 16th centuries. According to Carla Gannis, Emoji add a new flatness to the iconography of the past, emptying it of controversy and replacing it with something akin to Murakami’s Superflat aesthetic questioning the “sins” of our contemporary consumer culture.
In an essay accompanying The Garden of Emoji Delights titled ‘Digicalyptic Realities, or The Frolic of the Flat’, curator Sabin Bors claims that this is arguably one of the most relevant digital works in recent years. While discussing digital symbology in its relation to Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, the relation between Emoji Delights and the works of other contemporary artists influenced by Bosch, or the place of Emoji Delights in the work of Carla Gannis, the author makes an interesting interpretation on the role of the digital in contemporary society and the passage from culture to civilization.
For all its technological infrastructure, the digitalization of communication is seen as a means to disseminate an increasingly analogical content that bears more emotional charge and agency. Sabin Bors argues, however, that to understand The Garden of Emoji Delights, we must understand the type of culture these images and their power belong to, the technological codifications of today’s language, and the relation between expressions and consumer culture.
Carla Gannis lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions both nationally and internationally. Gannis is the recipient of several awards and her work has been featured or reviewed in The Huffington Post, Wired, Art F City, Hyperallergic, The Wallstreet Journal, & The New York Times, among others. Most recently she collaborated with poet Justin Petropoulos on a transmedia book, installation and net art project entitled <legend> </legend> (Jaded Ibis Press and Transfer Gallery, 2013). She is faculty and Assistant Chair of the Department of Digital Arts at Pratt Institute. Carla Gannis is represented by Kasia Kay Art projects Gallery in Chicago and by Transfer Gallery in New York.
A full version of the essay is featured on anti-utopias.
Also, see Vice's "The Creators Project" article.
Acknowledgments: RAFIA SANTANA, studio assistance
The Suite (Beyond White Cube)
September 5th - October 4th, 2014
Reception for Art After Hours: Friday, September 19th, 6-9PM.
Art After Hours is an exclusive invitational event organized by EXPO Chicago and Chicago Gallery News.
Explore Fulton Market: Saturday, September 20th, 12-5 PM.
Both of these events are free and open to the public.
Gallery regular hours: Friday - Saturday 11:30AM - 5PM and by appointment.
Chicago, IL - Kasia Kay Art Projects Gallery is proud to announce the opening of The Suite, a group exhibition curated by Kasia Kay. The gallery will display a unique collection of art and design objects assured to delight the senses.
Participating artists: Sandra Bermudez, Kim Dorland, Elisa Johns, Dawn Mellor, Rubem Robierb.
Participating designers: Kreatia, Mimi Plange, Nathalie Sevikian, Fine Art Wallpapers.
Farameh Media – The Curated Collection - limited edition publications with unique artworks by selected artists: Penny, Peter Tunney, Zevs.
The philosophy of this curatorial project is to illuminate the relationship between art, design, fashion and functional object. Artists and designers selected for The Suite create compelling and imaginative work in the fields of painting, digital photography, sculpture, functional art and fashion design. They were invited to participate in this opportunity to present their work to an international market of collectors, art enthusiasts and professionals in Chicago.
The Suite combines fine artworks by several world-renowned artists, as well as the elements of apparel and design - fashion designs by MP, a womenswear label based in New York; unique garments by Kreatia, fine jewelry by Parisian designer Natahlie Sevikian; selection of limited edition art books -The Curated Private Label Collection from Farameh Media LLC; and Fine Art Wallpapers wall-coverings. All the art and design objects and furniture make up the décor of the gallery, which becomes a cultural space for socializing, thus questioning the nature of the function of art, and blurring the lines between fine art, functional art, art objects and design.
Fine Art Wallpapers is an exclusive, curated collection of contemporary wallpapers designed by an array of established international artists. Rich with dynamic forms, they combine contemporary fine art with high-end design. Unlike any other custom wall-coverings, FAW acts as the perfect link between the worlds of contemporary art and interior and fashion designs.
The latest addition to the FAW collection includes several designs by Mimi Plange (MP), an eponymous luxury ready to wear fashion brand that has been worn by Michelle Obama, Rihanna, and many more. This exhibition also features the new Capsule Collection by MP, displaying accessories from this brand.
RIM LEE - FATHER'S LAW
April 11 - May 17, 2014
Opening Reception: Friday, April 11, 6-8PM
CHICAGO, IL: Kasia Kay Art Projects is pleased to announce Father’s Law, artist Rim Lee’s second solo exhibition at the gallery. The show features mixed media paintings exhibiting a range of the artist’s practice from her realist and surrealist approach to early work as well as her most recent abstract inventions. An overall focus on the intensity of human emotion is palpable on the walls while an evolution of her ideas is revealed as the pieces unfold.
Lee’s oldest work in the show is a self-portrait, an oil painting titled Absence, which captures a dramatic yet representational image of the artist’s former ideas. This is how the artist’s journey began. The process to make these kind of portraits starts with the application of black paint, either onto Lee’s own body or another model’s nude figure. Documentation photographs of this performance are then re-translated onto a painting through a highly technical process. Both media – of photography and paint - serve as a vehicle to transform a stylistic female form onto canvas in order to tear away the surface between artist and audience. Lee was able to let go of her timidity with these series of paintings and expose an undiscovered part of herself.
Breaking away drastically from this type of performative painting, Lee recently began to make abstract creations – mixed media and oil works mostly on canvas and paper, many of which are present in this exhibition. She was looking to change the style of her artistic communication and add layers to the meaning they conveyed. These abstract works allowed her to be more impulsive and pushed her to use more experimental and bold color. What you see on the walls is not only the expressive gesture rather also the expressive body, trying to discard and re-locate itself within the painted surface.
Rim Lee is an important internationally collected Korean artist who recently exhibited her work at Love Actually, Seoul Museum, Seoul, South Korea (2013), and Can Can China!, Space Can Beijing, Beijing, China (2013). Previously, she has also participated in the Korean Eye Exhibit at MAD, NYC, Korean Eye-Fantastic Ordinary (2010) and Korean Eye-Moon Generation (2009), Saatchi Gallery in London. At Kasia Kay Art Projects, Rim Lee was featured in The Body a 2-person exhibition with Claudia Hart as well as been a part of many international art fairs including: Art Chicago 2010 and 2011 and scope Miami 2011 last December. In 2010 Lee was nominated for the Perrier Jouet Award.
For more information please contact Kasia Kay at info@kasiakaygallery.com or call 312-944-0408.
