Life Inside and Out
Heechan Kim, Michael Kukla, Rebecca Litt
Curated by Leslie Kerby
January 24th – March 31st, 2012
308at156 is pleased to present its third exhibition Life Inside and Out, with works by Heechan Kim, Michael Kukla, and Rebecca Litt, and curated by Leslie Kerby. As we welcome a new year, we are all in a sense like these three emerging artists— looking to define our lives on our own terms and finding new ways to occupy life both inside and outside of ourselves to gain perspective on our global society.
Heechan Kim investigates life from a conceptual space where his ideas about human relationships are intertwined with the structural processes of hand made forms. Through the process of bending thin strips of wood and stitching them with metal wires, he explores emotional tension. obsession, violence and sexuality to ultimately express the understanding that every human being is connected, bounded and destined to exist together. He sees his sculptural objects as human-like containers that create an inside and outside boundary to create new space and volume opening the object up— like in life— to new possibilities and thereby allowing it and ourselves to become something much greater.
Rebecca Litt mixes fragments of her own life with imagined stories to recast narratives that are very present. Awkward looking people placed into slightly skewed representations of the Brooklyn landscape where Rebecca lives and works, give each setting an illusion of safety on the verge of being broken. While her subjects appear to be unquestioning of their surroundings, there is a tension between them and their environment with planes of color suggesting barriers to work around as well as pathways from which to choose.
Michael Kukla is inspired by the act of nature and time upon materials such as stone and wood. He creates sculptural, cellular spaces that can appear to be either positive or negative. Whether he is sculpting by drilling and grinding materials or drawing in monochromatic colors, he wants the viewer to be able to visually penetrate the surface, to feel the depth and life of the form and feel that the breath created by the light emanating from the cells, is organic and naturally formed. Working outside nature for this exhibition, Michael created two sculptures from the manmade material styrofoam.
Heechan Kim originally from Korea is a recent M.F.A. graduate in wood working and furniture design from Rochester Institute of Technology. His work has been shown at the Viridian and Phoenix galleries in New York City and was recently reviewed in American Craft Magazine.
Born in Prague, Czech Republic, Michael Kukla studied painting at Castleton State College in Vermont, where he received his BFA; and sculpture at Hochshule der Kuenste in Berlin, Germany. He has shown in the US and Europe and was featured live on Czech TV as the first American artist to exhibit in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia since the end of World War II. Among his many commissions for sculpture, Michael was hired by Apple Computer in 1992 to create marble pedestals for the full line of Apple computers.
Rebecca Litt received her M.F.A. from Indiana University School of Fine Arts in painting. She lives and works in Brooklyn. Her work has recently been exhibited at Factory Fresh and Storefront galleries in Brooklyn as well as at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Ogunquit, Maine.
Leslie Kerby, fine artist and printmaker, has lived and worked in Brooklyn, NY for 30 years. Her prints are in the permanent collections at Columbia University, New York, NY; the State University of Arkansas, State University, AR and in private collections in the US, Holland and England. She has exhibited her work at institutions such as the Masur Museum of Art, Chelsea Art Museum, Loyola College Crown Center Gallery and Target Gallery Torpedo Factory Center, the Bradford Gallery, Arkansas State University, and Storefront Gallery and Kunsthalle Galapagos, both in Brooklyn. Leslie is one of the original Core Collaborators at Proteus Gowanus Interdisciplinary Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, and former Board Chair of Kentler International Drawing Space also in Brooklyn, NY.
308at156 Project Artspace serves as a unique creative platform for new and emerging artists, selected by seasoned guest curators. This new inter-disciplinary space is located in the Presbyterian Building, a French Gothic chateaux-inspired office building on lower Fifth Avenue. In this architectural jewel with its diverse history, the organization programs events and exhibitions in which young artists and curators have the opportunity to meet, engage and promote new collaborative projects. The next exhibition curated by artist Michael Strasser will open mid-April 2012.
For more information or press photographs contact: Jeremy Young at (212) 271-0664.
