PRESS RELEASE: Visual Implications at ChaShaMa and KUNSTRAUM
Visual Implications
January 19th - February 12th, 2023
Opening Receptions
Chashama: Thursday, January 19th from 6-8pm
KUNSTRAUM LLC: Sunday, January 22nd from 4-6pm
Curated by: Ashley Ouderkirk, KUNSTRAUM Curator-in-Residence 2022-23
Artists: Charles Clary, Nanse Kawashima, and Cassandra Zampini
(NEW YORK, NY & BROOKLYN, NY) We are pleased to announce Visual Implications, a two-venue exhibition hosted by both Chashama and KUNSTRAUM displaying artworks by three emerging artists: Charles Clary, Nanse Kawashima, and Cassandra Zampini. Over two-hundred works of art— including a maximalist paper sculpture installation in the KUNSTRAUM gallery space— will be on view beginning January 19th through February 12th for a thought-provoking dive into the complexities of contemporary communication.
Visual Implications will explore how artists tap into our 21st century visual comprehension through gesture, symbolism, and pop-culture iconography— all deeply rooted in art historical traditions. In a flood of text messages, emails, and notifications, we have shifted our focus away from the written word, and instead, have gravitated towards a visual vocabulary of selfies, memes, and iconographic and pop culture references that signal both personal identities and worldviews, and serve as symbols of literacy and community connectedness in our rapidly developing upcycling image culture. Using the artworks of Charles Clary, Nanse Kawashima, and Cassandra Zampini, viewers are invited to flex their visual literacy by recognizing familiar gestures, symbols, and icons while contemplating the artist’s intention behind each work.
Charles Clary creates colorful, layered, paper relief-sculptures embedded in salvaged found objects. Using vintage VHS sleeves, or antique ornate gold frames, Clary stirs our nostalgia, recalling memories of childhood from grandma’s house to weekend video rentals. Combining both subtle and traditional symbols of “memento mori,” each work also coaxes the viewer to ponder what lies beneath the surface, peering deep into the receding strata of colored paper to behold the traumas intertwined with those same memories.
For his installation piece at KUNSTRAUM, Clary will salon-hang over one-hundred works from his series, Memento Morididle Movement. In each sculpture the artist explores this duality of memory, yet as an installation the vast menagerie of framed, colorful, excavated surfaces can be read as acceptances or benchmarks of healing from grief. While the skull symbolism plays with a reminder of inevitable death, it also ventures into the ephemeral nature of these moments in our lives.
Nanse Kawashima takes vintage printed magazine pages, postcards and her digital photographic prints, and paints over various parts of the surface area to isolate expressive and symbolic elements such as eyes and hands, and other familiar objects. For Kawashima, each work references a universal symbolism present in mythology, folklore and religious traditions throughout the world.
When only the eyes remain, Kawashima sometimes creates her “creatures,” as anthropomorphized celestial or terrestrial objects (as seen in Wave). Each evokes a force in nature that also channels familiar narratives influenced by tarot and astrology: the guiding star, the eye of the storm, and the seed phase of a new moon. Kawashima embraces the abstract nature of symbolism and how a single symbol can have multiple meanings and interpretations beyond her initial intentions.
Cassandra Zampini creates mined-image, mosaic-like collages from social media and other internet sources. By hand-selecting images harvested from her algorithms, she constructs artworks that are composite portraits reflecting what we “value” in our digital lives such as: the ubiquitous posing gestures in selfies— like those flexing in bathroom mirrors— and the symbolism and pop-culture references appropriated for conspiracy riddled memes series.
Her film, MediaWarfare, plays hundreds of memes and conspiracy videos concurrently to demonstrate the bombardment of toxic information experienced on social media. Zampini’s work expresses the sheer quantity and speed at which information— whether genuine, misleading, or false— can spread. Her work offers us a cautionary tale of how images can influence and shape our worldview, self-identity, and opinions now more than in any other time in history.
When viewed together, these artworks delve into deeper conversations about the seductive power, nostalgia, and simplicity of visual communication, while also addressing the dangers, biases, and miscommunications. As we continue to navigate in this digital age, should we place a higher value on visual literacy? Is our society aptly weighing theVisual Implications?
ABOUT
Since 1995, Chashama has partnered with property owners to transform unused real estate for 30,000 artists and over 150 small businesses, hosted 4,000 public art events, provided 1,500 classes in under-served communities, and reached audiences of nearly a million.
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KUNSTRAUM LLC is a gallery, artist hub, and studio space located near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Engaging artists, architects, curators, designers, filmmakers and writers, we are an interdisciplinary community that seeks to redefine the way creatives and curators collaborate. We offer thought-provoking exhibitions, public programs, networking opportunities, research, affordable studio space, curatorial fellowships, artist residencies, and discourse for creative production. By opening our gallery to different art professionals interested in engaging ideas, unconventional thinking, and risk-taking, KUNSTRAUM pushes the parameters of emerging, international, contemporary art.
KUNSTRAUM's programs are supported, in part, by Art in General. The exhibition is a culmination of KUNSTRAUM’s Curator-in-Residence program 2022-23.
PUBLIC PROGRAMS
Curator Tours:
at Chashama on Saturday, January 28th at 2pm
&
at KUNSTRAUM on Sunday, February 12th at 4pm
INFORMATION
Locations:
KUNSTRAUM LLC, 20 Grand Avenue, Loft 509, Brooklyn, NY 11205
Chashama, 340 E 64th Street, New York, NY 10516
Hours:
KUNSTRAUM: Saturdays, 12-6pm; Sunday-Friday from 12-6pm are by appointment only— please contact us first!
Chashama: Thursdays + Fridays, 3-8pm; Saturdays + Sundays, 10am-8pm; Additional dates and times are available by appointment— please contact us first!
Contact: Ashley Ouderkirk | Ashley@kunstraumllc.com or AshleyLOuderkirk@gmail.com
Media Contact: Veronica Petty | Veronica@domingocomms.com
Websites: www.ChaShaMa.org and www.kunstraumllc.com
Social Media: @chashama @kunstraumllc @ouderkirkonart #kunstraumllc
Image Credit: Nanse Kawashima, Wave, 2020, Acrylic on vintage print media
