KAT LARSON \ THE GHOST FROM VEGA
Interdisciplinary artist and performer Kat Larson creates hauntingly beautiful video paintings, addressing themes of identity, race, and femininity. Gently welcoming the viewer into her world, Larson elegantly captures suspended moments to magnify a heightened sense of mysticism, awareness, and self.
In Kat Larson's new series of photographs and video, The Ghost from Vega, she tells the story of a being from another planet who crash lands on Earth. Intrigued by our world, the visitor begins to explore it only to find their strength weakened by the deficit of love and compassion. Their body begins to slowly fade away until, over time, they become a ghost with no means to return home. This intimate, tender story serves as a parable to the power of connection, perseverance, and strength of the spirit. Larson weaves this story into the viewer’s ability to empathize through her compelling and empathetic storytelling.
In Kat Larson's new series of photographs and video, The Ghost from Vega, she tells the story of a being from another planet who crash lands on Earth. Intrigued by our world, the visitor begins to explore it only to find their strength weakened by the deficit of love and compassion. Their body begins to slowly fade away until, over time, they become a ghost with no means to return home. This intimate, tender story serves as a parable to the power of connection, perseverance, and strength of the spirit. Larson weaves this story into the viewer’s ability to empathize through her compelling and empathetic storytelling.
EMILY GHERARD \MAKING PRESENCE KNOWN
Seattle-based painter, draughtsman, and printmaker Emily Gherard creates hauntingly tender works, evoking a feeling of landscapes receding into the distance, or figures emerging from the fog. Employing the accumulation of repetitive marks or tearing, scratching, or sanding the surface to remove a day’s labor, Gherard builds up a physicality which brings tangible weight and gravity to her work. In her solo exhibition at Bridge, Making Presence Known, Gherard moves away from her ethereal human and rock-like formations to explore layered texture, surface, sheen, and tone.
Historically, Gherard has composed ebbing and flowing forms to convey a sense of light and depth, each dark shadow a stand-in for the human figure. Her narrative has been built around a sense of everything and nothingness, unity, land, and body; making the indelible unknown relatably human. The narrative she builds allows the viewer to empathize, projecting themselves into the image as though they, themselves, are the subject. Large silhouettes stack up and recede into the distance, rising and falling, crumbling into the foreground or cascading into the darkness below like a flowing cataract. Like their real-world geological counterparts, the forms stand in defiance of their environments, even as they are being shaped by them.
Historically, Gherard has composed ebbing and flowing forms to convey a sense of light and depth, each dark shadow a stand-in for the human figure. Her narrative has been built around a sense of everything and nothingness, unity, land, and body; making the indelible unknown relatably human. The narrative she builds allows the viewer to empathize, projecting themselves into the image as though they, themselves, are the subject. Large silhouettes stack up and recede into the distance, rising and falling, crumbling into the foreground or cascading into the darkness below like a flowing cataract. Like their real-world geological counterparts, the forms stand in defiance of their environments, even as they are being shaped by them.
GUEST CURATOR TRACY RECTOR \ BLOODLINES
Featuring the work of Frank Peterson (Makah), Lauren Monroe Jr (Blackfeet), Nahaan (Tlingit/Iñupiat/Paiute), Steven Paul Judd (Choctaw/Kiowa), and Raven Julia Juarez (Blackfeet)
For many Indigenous people, art and life are inseparable — as essential as food and water in a multitude of ways. It keeps us grounded and connected to Creator and Spirit. Part of the concept for this series of shows was to create space where artists present work from their daily practice, and for the public to learn about the vast diversity of traditional as well as contemporary talent in our communities.
My curatorial process is a response to the pervasive colonizer mentality of racism. Native history is everyone's history, here on the lands now called the United States of America. BLOODLINES is a proud reminder that we’re still here on the land of our ancestors despite the genocide our relatives experienced. It carves a space for Indigenous people to support each other, creatively, in a city with too few spaces. BLOODLINES is the fourth part of a series which strives to “indigenize” environments around Seattle, manifesting safe and nurturing locations for our families and friends, and creating community through interaction and discussions. This is revolutionary.
Right now, the lifeblood of Mother Earth continues to be threatened by corporations, most recently by the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota. The activists at Standing Rock are not only protecting their sovereign rights, history, and land; they’re fighting for the health of the land and water for millions of Americans along the Missouri River. Their resistance is a wake up call. We are living in tenuous times and tribal prophecies have foreshadowed what's to come.
In light of these events, it is essential to remember that First People's history is everyone's history, and we are on Indigenous land. There is a connection that cannot be severed or ignored. Your bloodline is your heritage and your ancestry — your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and all your relatives throughout history and the natural world. BLOODLINES is about the importance of honoring the the water ways, the lifeblood of Mother Earth and the presence of our ancestors in every molecule and particle surrounding us today. We are all stardust and memories. Creation is in our blood.
With this final installation, my intention is to weave together a fabric of safe space where self-expression, feminine power, anger, awareness, community-building and complex identities are celebrated and protected.
Tracy Rector
Choctaw/Seminole
October 2016
For many Indigenous people, art and life are inseparable — as essential as food and water in a multitude of ways. It keeps us grounded and connected to Creator and Spirit. Part of the concept for this series of shows was to create space where artists present work from their daily practice, and for the public to learn about the vast diversity of traditional as well as contemporary talent in our communities.
My curatorial process is a response to the pervasive colonizer mentality of racism. Native history is everyone's history, here on the lands now called the United States of America. BLOODLINES is a proud reminder that we’re still here on the land of our ancestors despite the genocide our relatives experienced. It carves a space for Indigenous people to support each other, creatively, in a city with too few spaces. BLOODLINES is the fourth part of a series which strives to “indigenize” environments around Seattle, manifesting safe and nurturing locations for our families and friends, and creating community through interaction and discussions. This is revolutionary.
Right now, the lifeblood of Mother Earth continues to be threatened by corporations, most recently by the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota. The activists at Standing Rock are not only protecting their sovereign rights, history, and land; they’re fighting for the health of the land and water for millions of Americans along the Missouri River. Their resistance is a wake up call. We are living in tenuous times and tribal prophecies have foreshadowed what's to come.
In light of these events, it is essential to remember that First People's history is everyone's history, and we are on Indigenous land. There is a connection that cannot be severed or ignored. Your bloodline is your heritage and your ancestry — your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and all your relatives throughout history and the natural world. BLOODLINES is about the importance of honoring the the water ways, the lifeblood of Mother Earth and the presence of our ancestors in every molecule and particle surrounding us today. We are all stardust and memories. Creation is in our blood.
With this final installation, my intention is to weave together a fabric of safe space where self-expression, feminine power, anger, awareness, community-building and complex identities are celebrated and protected.
Tracy Rector
Choctaw/Seminole
October 2016
DAVE KENNEDY \ ANAMORPHOSIS
Bridge Productions is pleased to present Anamorphosis, in which photographer and installation artist Dave Kennedy introduces new work, continuing the investigation he began with The Likeliness of an Appearance. In this series, Kennedy explores the illusory nature of objects and space using photography, collage, and installation to play with ideas of identity, truth, illusion, and perception.
We need an alternative definition of reality. One that allows us to reconsider the beliefs that we bring to what we see.
Anamorphosis provides a meditation on existence. One that lends significance to places, objects, and things, elevating them through a process of familiarity. The details that I notice become representations of my reality. They represent both what they are and something else, at the same time. Such symbols, in my opinion, allow for a different way of seeing the self, not as a mirror but as an access point. They act as elements that allow the viewer to explore and possibly complicate the narratives that are firmly affixed in normative presumptions.
Within my process — this special manner of viewing, human subjectivities and more individualized identifications are seen as something that can become knowable. Anamorphosis is a metaphor for reimagining and expanding on appearances and overcoming “Otherness”— more in the sense that when someone is seen as less than, or as an object, this perspective can then be appropriated and re-loaded with more poignant meanings that point towards agency and autonomy.
We need an alternative definition of reality. One that allows us to reconsider the beliefs that we bring to what we see.
Anamorphosis provides a meditation on existence. One that lends significance to places, objects, and things, elevating them through a process of familiarity. The details that I notice become representations of my reality. They represent both what they are and something else, at the same time. Such symbols, in my opinion, allow for a different way of seeing the self, not as a mirror but as an access point. They act as elements that allow the viewer to explore and possibly complicate the narratives that are firmly affixed in normative presumptions.
Within my process — this special manner of viewing, human subjectivities and more individualized identifications are seen as something that can become knowable. Anamorphosis is a metaphor for reimagining and expanding on appearances and overcoming “Otherness”— more in the sense that when someone is seen as less than, or as an object, this perspective can then be appropriated and re-loaded with more poignant meanings that point towards agency and autonomy.
SEATTLE ART FAIR
We're pleased to announce we'll be highlighting each of our represented artists: Julie Alpert, Tim Cross, Sue Danielson, Emily Gherard, Dave Kennedy, and Kat Larson as well as guest artist Amanda Manitach (represented by Winston Wachter as of 2017) at the upcoming Seattle Art Fair in August. We are located in the SW corner of the floor at booth A28 -- VIP passes are available for a limited time, so let us know if you would like to set yours aside. These passes are for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday during fair hours. For opening night, tickets are available through the Seattle Art Fair website.
Each of these artists are connected through overlapping aesthetics and rigorous, process-based practice. They bring with them an expansive array of work and materials from video and video paintings to traditional paintings; collage, photography, and drawing. Their narratives address ideas about location, dislocation, identity, repetition, and time. As a result, they gather naturally to speak to the arresting nature of their natural, personal, and political landscape: formidably beautiful, quietly monumental, and powerfully moving.
Each of these artists are connected through overlapping aesthetics and rigorous, process-based practice. They bring with them an expansive array of work and materials from video and video paintings to traditional paintings; collage, photography, and drawing. Their narratives address ideas about location, dislocation, identity, repetition, and time. As a result, they gather naturally to speak to the arresting nature of their natural, personal, and political landscape: formidably beautiful, quietly monumental, and powerfully moving.
TIM CROSS \ NEW TREES
This August, we are extremely honored to present New Trees, Tim Cross’ second solo exhibition with Bridge Productions. In Cross’ new body of work, he will continue his exploration of color, form, and material to describe his fantastical science fiction scenery and unfamiliar chromatic terrain. The title, New Trees, suggests a hint of new growth and optimism emerging from the foreign ground. As we view this new land through Cross’ fractured kaleidoscopic perspective, we imagine a new beginning.
Tim Cross composes these large-scale works using pre-cut pieces of laser-printed paper, then arranging them on an armature of silk cloth to build up the imagery. The final result is a soft, floating piece that resembles something between a painting, print, silkscreen, or batik-dyed cloth. Cross refers to each of these cut and transferred pieces as his brushstroke: building hue, value, and form the same way a painter builds layers and architecture into a composition. Because of the way transfers deposit pigment on the surface, this kind of work is often mistaken for a print. This isn’t an entirely incorrect assumption - the technique leaves large blocks of ink on the surface in a similar process as printmaking. Specifically, the ink is transferred from the paper onto a surface in this case, silk, by soaking the paper and fabric in matte medium which adheres it to the surface. The texture will vary depending on the photo or drawing chosen, its color, and whether it is a carbon or laser copy. Each hand-cut patch represents an element of another drawing or photograph that the artist has selected based on the kind of mark, saturation, or shape it will leave on the surface.
Tim Cross composes these large-scale works using pre-cut pieces of laser-printed paper, then arranging them on an armature of silk cloth to build up the imagery. The final result is a soft, floating piece that resembles something between a painting, print, silkscreen, or batik-dyed cloth. Cross refers to each of these cut and transferred pieces as his brushstroke: building hue, value, and form the same way a painter builds layers and architecture into a composition. Because of the way transfers deposit pigment on the surface, this kind of work is often mistaken for a print. This isn’t an entirely incorrect assumption - the technique leaves large blocks of ink on the surface in a similar process as printmaking. Specifically, the ink is transferred from the paper onto a surface in this case, silk, by soaking the paper and fabric in matte medium which adheres it to the surface. The texture will vary depending on the photo or drawing chosen, its color, and whether it is a carbon or laser copy. Each hand-cut patch represents an element of another drawing or photograph that the artist has selected based on the kind of mark, saturation, or shape it will leave on the surface.
C. DAVIDA INGRAM \ LEXICAL TUTOR
Lexical Tutor is the next chapter in a story that Ingram began with her collaborative artist project stereoTYPE. With stereoTYPE, Ingram invited five other black women artists to investigate how text helps us to imagine race and, specifically, blackness. With Lexical Tutor, Ingram continues her focus on creating an imaginarium of black womanhood--envisioning what its natural state might be along with a dissection of its distorted state under white supremacy.
The textual highlight notes in Lexical Tutor shares more about the process of making the work including Ingram's connections with her collaborators Jane Kibirge, Zorn B. Taylor, Lauren Holloway, Dan Webb, Bob Redmond, and Eric Carnell/Fogland Studio.
C. Davida Ingram is a Seattle-based artist and storyteller whose artwork focuses on creating counter-narratives through the use of social practice projects, performances, installations, and conceptual art. Her work explores desire, space, time and memory using blackness as its prism. Ingram is specifically interested in expanding the archive of inquiry-making around 21st century black female subjectivity. Her re-readings of gender, sexuality, economic class, and vernaculars are a way of making images that re-conceive of what the black female body can be and become. Her work has been shown at the Frye Art Museum, Northwest African American Art Museum, Town Hall, Intiman Theater, University of Washington, Evergreen College, Washington State Convention Center, and the Tacoma Art Museum.
The textual highlight notes in Lexical Tutor shares more about the process of making the work including Ingram's connections with her collaborators Jane Kibirge, Zorn B. Taylor, Lauren Holloway, Dan Webb, Bob Redmond, and Eric Carnell/Fogland Studio.
C. Davida Ingram is a Seattle-based artist and storyteller whose artwork focuses on creating counter-narratives through the use of social practice projects, performances, installations, and conceptual art. Her work explores desire, space, time and memory using blackness as its prism. Ingram is specifically interested in expanding the archive of inquiry-making around 21st century black female subjectivity. Her re-readings of gender, sexuality, economic class, and vernaculars are a way of making images that re-conceive of what the black female body can be and become. Her work has been shown at the Frye Art Museum, Northwest African American Art Museum, Town Hall, Intiman Theater, University of Washington, Evergreen College, Washington State Convention Center, and the Tacoma Art Museum.
KRISTA SVALBONAS \ TOPOPHILIA
We are excited to introduce Chicago-based artist Krista Svalbonas’ first solo show in Seattle, Topophilia. The primary focus of Topophilia is her highly acclaimed Migrants series — a body of smaller photography and collage works in which Svalbonas investigates notions of time, place, familiarity, and displacement. Her new work, the Migrator series, is a set of bas relief constructions breaking free of the wall to further her exploration of dismantled and rearranged architectural features. Svalbonas addresses a multitude of politically and identity-laden themes in her work. The daughter of Latvian and Lithuanian parents, she carries their history as displaced, uprooted refugees travelling through Germany before being allowed into the United States, with no place to call home and at the whim of political agendas on which they had no affect. These themes are carried over into issues of gentrification and a rapidly changing urban landscape in cities across the US today.
As the title suggests, Topophilia conveys a sense of poetic love, nostalgia, and sentiment into the composites she builds from her photographs. The act of documenting solidifies the structures’ place in time and history, and rearranging them paves a new path for what’s to come, or how a place is remembered. Her original visual recording is an unreliable way to hold the thing one loves, just as a city is an unreliable place for one’s love to remain. Yet through the re-positioning and reverence of the new, Svalbonas finds a tender way to rebuild, imagine, and remember.
As the title suggests, Topophilia conveys a sense of poetic love, nostalgia, and sentiment into the composites she builds from her photographs. The act of documenting solidifies the structures’ place in time and history, and rearranging them paves a new path for what’s to come, or how a place is remembered. Her original visual recording is an unreliable way to hold the thing one loves, just as a city is an unreliable place for one’s love to remain. Yet through the re-positioning and reverence of the new, Svalbonas finds a tender way to rebuild, imagine, and remember.
JULIE ALPERT \ GARBLED LOVE LETTERS
We are delighted to present Seattle artist Julie Alpert’s solo exhibition, Garbled Love Letters, at Bridge Productions this May. The prominent feature of Garbled Love Letters will be three large pieces in painting and collage from her Bows and Drips series. Each piece overflows with colorful bow-ties, ribbons, and bursts of pattern; literally dripping with bright paint and ornamentation. Also featured is an installation of small, intimate watercolors floating across the length of a wall - the series this exhibition is named after. This body of small works pairs loose, airy, asemic writing and rhythmic repetition; articulating nonsensical language and playful patterns, as well as invented and actual symbols.
Alpert’s highly synthesized and near-psychedelic translation could be easily read as an analysis of the over-stimulating effects of media and social media. If "the medium is the message”, then Alpert’s work delivers ornate packaging as mimesis to the effect of aesthetics and quantity over content in media culture. The effect being, ultimately, the originally intended message is overridden by the opulence of the package. Once we peel back the layers, however, the content is ultimately dissatisfying and isolating— perhaps it is our own messages that have been wrongly interpreted, misunderstood, or outshined altogether. Yet we continue, continuously translating in a bizarre game of Telephone. Information courses through an endless feedback loop — repeating through innumerable channels until finally only the symbols, patterns, and decoration remain.
Alpert’s highly synthesized and near-psychedelic translation could be easily read as an analysis of the over-stimulating effects of media and social media. If "the medium is the message”, then Alpert’s work delivers ornate packaging as mimesis to the effect of aesthetics and quantity over content in media culture. The effect being, ultimately, the originally intended message is overridden by the opulence of the package. Once we peel back the layers, however, the content is ultimately dissatisfying and isolating— perhaps it is our own messages that have been wrongly interpreted, misunderstood, or outshined altogether. Yet we continue, continuously translating in a bizarre game of Telephone. Information courses through an endless feedback loop — repeating through innumerable channels until finally only the symbols, patterns, and decoration remain.
ASHLEIGH ROSE ROBB \ anamnesis
Originally from Los Angeles, Ashleigh Robb is a Seattle-based artist who uses mark-making as a gesture to record the passage of time. Her compositions create a kind of document, composed from the accumulation of simple lines and marks to build up form. The process of marking time varies, and as such, the materials used to do so are ever changing. Each line is a faint documentation which only appears up close, fading into white as you step further away. The result is a haunting, philosophical body of work that carries forward its Minimalist lineage.
TECTONIC \ group show
We're pleased to introduce TECTONIC, a group exhibition highlighting our 2016 lineup of guest and represented artists: Julie Alpert, Tim Cross, Sue Danielson, Emily Gherard, C. Davida Ingram, Dave Kennedy, Kat Larson, Ashleigh Robb, and Krista Svalbonas.
Each of these artists are connected through overlapping aesthetics and rigorous, process-based practice. Their narratives address ideas about location, dislocation, identity, repetition, and time. As a result, they gather naturally to form a distinctive group with a broad spectrum of styles and perspectives.
They bring with them an expansive array of work and materials from video and video paintings to traditional paintings; collage, photography, and drawing. Each embodies their own unique characteristics and style of storytelling, but share the binding qualities of strata, texture, documentation, and history. Though some are more bold in color and composition and others more quiet, when shown together these artists flesh out a particular aesthetic which speaks to the arresting nature of their natural, personal, and political landscape: formidably beautiful, quietly monumental, and powerfully moving.
Each of these artists are connected through overlapping aesthetics and rigorous, process-based practice. Their narratives address ideas about location, dislocation, identity, repetition, and time. As a result, they gather naturally to form a distinctive group with a broad spectrum of styles and perspectives.
They bring with them an expansive array of work and materials from video and video paintings to traditional paintings; collage, photography, and drawing. Each embodies their own unique characteristics and style of storytelling, but share the binding qualities of strata, texture, documentation, and history. Though some are more bold in color and composition and others more quiet, when shown together these artists flesh out a particular aesthetic which speaks to the arresting nature of their natural, personal, and political landscape: formidably beautiful, quietly monumental, and powerfully moving.