K.OSS Contemporary Art is pleased to announce its participation in Art Mile Detroit, a new citywide digital art exhibition that champions Detroit’s vibrant and diverse arts community by promoting public programs and online acquisitions.

Taking place July 29 – August 5, Art Mile will feature nearly 60 of Detroit's local art galleries, institutional non-profits, museums and artist-run spaces.

K.OSS Contemporary Art is delighted to present "Metal, Paper, Wood" , a group show by Michigan artists Mary Gillis, Larry Cressman, Cuppetelli and Mendoza, and Lynne Avadenka. The show consists of two works by each artist, 8 works in total.

Gillis’ style has evolved from large pastel drawings, collages and prints to paintings and large-scale sculptures to mixed media, work on aluminum and recycled guardrail.

Cressman's work is comprised of the patient accumulation of hundreds of sticks and twigs in intricate patterns that both delight and defy the viewer’s eye.

Cuppetelli and Mendoza create installations and objects that combine physical elements with digital technologies, composing sensual, immersive and dynamic experiences.

Avadenka is known for her works that explore text and image, the physical and philosophical idea of the book, and the mystery and beauty of visual language.

We find it very interesting to combine these works together. They are so different but have so much in common.

We hope you enjoy our online exhibition at Art Mile.

Please visit Art Mile Detroit for updates and more information.

Thank you.

K.OSS Contemporary Art is pleased to present a collection of site-specific paper sculptures by German artist Angela Glajcar.

Angela Glajcar creates site-specific installations with paper, light and space. Her works reflect a study of the environment in which they are placed using an "extreme economy of means". In all these compositions there is "formal rigor, simplicity and transparency". The elegant purity of the compositions derive from the total absence of color, while their precision is determined by certain principles to which the artist strictly adheres. Interested in the exploration of how space is experienced, the artist uses a technique she calls “terforation,” which stems from perforation (the Latin word for hole) and terra (the Latin word for earth). Alluding to terra incognita, Glajcar is interested in exploring unknown regions through her work. “….terra incognita hints at a vague idea, the supposition of knowledge as yet not clearly definable. The object refusing to be defined more clearly is the shape, the space created by the horizontal layering of sheets of paper with holes in them,” she says. These shapes create hollow stretches of emptiness that stretch into the unknown. The works are distinguished on one side by overlaps, and on the other by subtractions of material through tears and perforations. It is a space that plays with light and shadow. The edges created by the “wounded” paper allows the viewer to rest their gaze and perceive - in that gesture of rupture – a thoughtful image of the unknown. These sculptures of Glajcar resemble choral works, in which each sheet of paper is recomposed into the harmony of the sculpture as a whole. The installations fully occupy their spaces, and once observed from different angles, invite transcendent moments of contemplation.

Spanning more than two decades of solo and group exhibitions around the world, Glajcar has won numerous awards, including the Zonta Art Award and the Phonix Art Award. She is a graduate of Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Nuremberg and served as a visiting professor of sculpture at the University of Giessen.

K.OSS CONTEMPORARY ART

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K.OSS Contemporary Art has been made possible in part by the Artist Fund of the New York Foundation for the Arts

K.OSS Contemporary Art is pleased to present “Intimations” by Detroit artist and printmaker Lynne Avadenka.

Avadenka’s first Detroit solo exhibition in 10 years will include prints, photographs and a mixed media installation.

Avadenka is known for her works that explore text and image, the physical and philosophical idea of the book, and the mystery and beauty of visual language. The exhibition presents art from several series: Traces (photographs), The Reunion of Broken Parts (intaglio monoprints) and Empty Cities (letterpress prints and collage).

Among her awards are a 2009 Kresge Arts in Detroit Fellowship and individual artist grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs. Avadenka recently received a 2019 Research Award from the Hadassah Brandeis Institute. Residencies and teaching opportunities have taken her to Germany, Israel, Italy, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Oregon and Virginia. Her art is included in both the first and second editions of “For the Love of Letterpress” (Bloomsbury Publishing). 

Avadenka’s work is exhibited and collected internationally, including the British Library, London; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio; The Detroit Institute of Arts; The Flint Institute of Arts, Flint, Michigan; The Jewish Museum, New York; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; The Library of Congress, Washington, DC; The New York Public Library; The Meermano Museum, The Hague, The Netherlands and The Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Avadenka has been active in the Detroit arts community since receiving a Master of Fine Arts from Wayne State University in 1981. In 2016 the University’s Department of Fine and Performing Arts presented her with a Career Achievement Award. Since 2013 Avadenka has served as the director of Signal-Return, a Detroit nonprofit letterpress print shop and community arts center.

The exhibition is on view from October 4 – November 23, 2019.

K.OSS CONTEMPORARY ART

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K.OSS Contemporary Art has been made possible in part by
the Artist Fund of the New York Foundation for the Arts

K.OSS Contemporary Art is pleased to present "Corpus," a new exhibition by British artist Richard Nott.

The abstract works of "Corpus" are indicative of Nott’s methodology and practice, with an emphasis on line, form, texture and ‘non-color,’ including shades of brown, grey and velvety blacks. According to Nott, viewing the panels is like being witness an evolution of matter. The work reflects a history of the materials: Cracks, cuts, marks and modifications of the surfaces show off a stunning array of alterations. There are no oils or acrylic paints in Richard’s studio; he works with industrial materials, bitumen, emulsions and varnishes, building them up layer upon layer, often over finely drawn grids or lines, into a textural palimpsest, before painstakingly scraping or gouging them back to reveal what lies underneath. Nott also often exposes the work to the elements, letting wind, fire and rain make their own natural impressions on the surface.

“I have no interest in illusionistic texture,” says Nott. “The work must be its own entity and have its own story ... It is an organic object, a living thing.” The evolution of each piece follows Nott’s exploration of these ideas. A piece can change within its own cycle of existence; the scores or smears applied early in the work’s life may be covered and brought back to the surface like a memory.

Born in 1963, Nott received his Fine Art degree from Lancashire Polytechnic and his M.A. in Fine Art at Reading University. His work forms part of numerous international and national collections. Most recently, he has exhibited “Histolysis” at the Millennium Gallery in St Ives. This is Nott’s first exhibition in Michigan.

K.OSS Contemporary Art is pleased to present, “Night Hunter”, a solo exhibition by Colorado-based artist and filmmaker Stacey Steers. The show consists of a miniature house called Night Hunter, a short film of the same name which will be projected on the gallery wall, a cottage, framed single collages, diptychs, and shadow boxes.

Stacey Steers is known for her process-driven, labor -intensive films composed of thousands of handmade works on paper.

A time- and labor-intensive feat of the imagination, the miniature Night Hunter house features 10 different rooms visible through windows, each decorated with carefully selected objects and equipped with video screens playing looped excerpts of the handmade film around which this imaginative exhibition is based. A meticulous four-year process, Steers crafted the film using more than 4,000 handcrafted collages as well as images of actress Lillian Gish pulled from silent era, live-action cinema and accompanied by a delicate and eerie score by Larry Polansky. Running just over 15 minutes, the Night Hunter film is a carefully composed and atmospheric dreamscape, with subtexts related to domestic entrapment, 19th century literary classics, and experimental filmmaking.

Included in the Sundance Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, New Directors New Films (New York), Rotterdam International Film Festival, Locarno International Film Festival and screened at the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), and MoMA, Stacey Steers’ short animated films have been screened throughout the U.S. and abroad and received numerous awards. Her installation work has been exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery, (Washington, D.C.), the Denver Art Museum, and the Hamburger Kunsthalle in Hamburg, Germany, among other venues.

Steers is a recipient of major grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, Creative Capital and the American Film Institute, and she was the focus of a major retrospective at the 2015 Annecy Festival of Animation in Annecy, France and received the Brakhage Vision Award at the 2012 Denver IFF.

K.OSS CONTEMPORARY ART

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K.OSS Contemporary Art has been made possible in part by the Artist Fund of the New York Foundation for the Arts

K.OSS Contemporary Art is pleased to present, “Past Imperfect,” a new collection of work by Santa Monica-based artist and photographer Georgina Reskala.

In this intimate body of work, Reskala seeks to stop transient moments, offering a cumulative record of observations and perceptions over time and space. Using her own recycled images as well as found and family photographs, she prints, takes them apart, and reshoots the images, recreating moments in order to stop time as people and memories flee and change. Incorporating a dialogue about “what is and what we are,” the result is a dreamlike series of silver gelatine prints, which blur the lines between reality, memory and the material.

Born and raised in Mexico City, Reskala moved to San Francisco to attend California College of Arts and Crafts, where she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography. After graduating, she spent a year in Barcelona and a year in Mexico City, working in advertising and on personal projects, later earning her MFA in 2015 at California College of the Arts. Reskala has had several solo and group shows in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, Barcelona and Mexico City, and in 2008, she was chosen as an ‘emerging artist to watch’ by a London-based agency ‘Fresh Air’. For nearly a decade, she has been involved in an ongoing project with a Mexican agency ‘Contornos’ documenting Oaxacan Artisans in an effort to widen their exposure. She is an adjunct professor at California College of the Arts and a part time teacher at the Harvey Milk Photo Center

The exhibition will be on view from March 15th through May 4th, 2019

K.OSS CONTEMPORARY ART

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K.OSS Contemporary Art has been made possible in part by the Artist Fund of the New York Foundation for the Arts

K.OSS Contemporary Art is pleased to present “Measures of Constriction”, a solo exhibition by Detroit fiber artist Annica Cuppetelli.

The exhibit, "Measures of Constriction," reveals a long-running theme in her work -- the intervention of fashion on the female body.

Interested in how fashion is tailored to constrict the female figure and ultimately, to transform it, the artist borrows techniques and materials from garment-making to create forms that evoke fashion but function instead as sculpture and space. They are at once ethereal and sculptural, imperfect yet refined. The use of boning as a material recalls the corset, while weaving and basketry reference traditional techniques associated with female labor. Instead of adhering to the conventions of wrapping and concealing typical of fashion design, Cuppetelli uses form, technique and materials to confront deeper questions about the female body and identity.

Spanning a decade of impressive solo and group exhibits around the world, she has regularly collaborated with Cristobal Mendoza (their previous joint exhibit “Linear Cycle #4” was shown at K.OSS gallery). A graduate of CCS (BFA, Fiber and Ceramics) and Cranbrook Academy of Art (MFA, Fiber), Cuppetelli is a Kresge Arts Fellow, as well as a previous artist in residence at Wassaic Projects and Santa Fe Art Institute, among others. She is a lecturer at the Stamps School of Art and Design and an instructor at CCS.

The exhibition will be on view from January 11th through March 2nd, 2019.

K.OSS CONTEMPORARY ART

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(+1) 248.599.22.32

K.OSS Contemporary Art has been made possible in part by

the Artist Fund of the New York Foundation for the Arts

K.OSS Contemporary Art is pleased to present “Fieldwork”, a solo exhibition by Michigan artist Larry Cressman. The show consists of several large-scale installations and framed works. His work is compromised of the patient accumulation of hundreds of sticks and twigs in intricate patterns that both delight and defy the viewer’s eye. Line operates as both language and object in his work and continues to be the driving force within his practice. Cressman’s work has evolved considerably through his exploration of drawing as a three-dimensional form of expression.

Living and working in Michigan, Cressman has developed an acute understanding of the landscape over the years. His non-traditional drawings are inspired by observations of the linear patterns found during the winter season when heavy snowfall creates stark contrasts across the entire state; dark branches casting shadows over the winter snow. His drawings are constructed using raspberry cane, dogbane, and dried daylily stalks. Cressman lets the gestural qualities of these found natural materials to take precedence in the work.

Site-specific projects have interested him throughout his career. There is a delight to see the relationship between these natural materials and the architecture of each gallery space. The “drawings” tend to transform the space, and this harmony allows the viewer to concentrate on the beauty of the material itself.

The work is expansive and at the same time deceptively simple – it allows the viewer to experience line and nature in a space for the first time. This act of discovering adds a level of magic and joy, rarely experienced in more conservative abstract work.

Cressman graduated with an MFA in drawing and printmaking from the University of Michigan. He has exhibited his works across the United States and Europe and his installations have been included in shows at the Detroit Institute of Arts, the University of Michigan Museum of Art , Dennos Museum, Richard M. Ross Museum, Target Gallery of the Torpedo Factory, Carnegie Mellon University, Richard L. Nelson Gallery at the University of California, Eastern Michigan University, Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design and Chelsea River Gallery as well as many other venues.

The exhibition will be on view from November 2nd through December 29th, 2018.  

K.OSS CONTEMPORARY ART

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(+1) 248.599.22.32

K.OSS Contemporary Art has been made possible in part by the Artist Fund of the New York Foundation for the Arts

K.OSS Contemporary Art is pleased to present “Frescos from the Island”, a solo exhibition featuring a selection of paintings by Vashon Island artist and sculptor Mark Bennion.

Bennion’ style has evolved from large-scale installation work to sculptures and collages to paintings.

His work in the last ten years reflects many minimal influences. His concentration on the simple geometric abstraction has been constant, though there are variations of size and shape.

He continues to explore a theme that has long interested him: the thread between ancient and contemporary culture.

 According to the artist, “My work has always been about the uncovering of an ancient innocence. It is about a simple geometry that interacts with the changing world that is around us and is within us.”

Over the past 30 years, Mark Bennion has developed a unique painting process, which he links to “Fresco”, using oil, plaster on a panel or canvas. Fresco technique, a form of mural painting executed upon freshly laid, or wet lime plaster, dates back to prehistoric mans very first paintings on cave walls and has been employed since antiquity and is closely associated with Italian Renaissance painting. 

Bennion sees his frescos as a “confluence of eastern and western techniques and traditions.” Like the Frescos of Pompeii, Bennionʼs paintings themselves convey a sense of history and tradition – the cracked plaster surface, layered with various pigments and ink are reminiscent of the richly colored walls that adorned homes, temples, and churches throughout the Mediterranean.

Mark Bennionʼs paintings express two different ways of looking at the natural world, both highly abstract. One is an impression of simple shapes floating in negative space create by layers of transparency. The others are sensitive gestures taken from details in nature against layers of color, one on top of the other. Mist, rain, clouds, twigs, branches, small leaves become the visual fodder for abstract images, suggesting meditations and thoughts about time and memory. These sensitive works allow a viewer to ruminate and meditate, to spend time lost in a very special world.

A practicing Buddhist for much of his adult life, Bennion is not as concerned with the specific story each painting or sculpture tells, as the moment of inner peace and meditation he hopes they inspire within the viewer.

He has exhibited both painting and sculptural works across the United States, Canada and Europe since 1968.

K.OSS CONTEMPORARY ART

www.kossgallery.com

(+1) 248.599.22.32

K.OSS Contemporary Art has been made possible in part by the Artist Fund of the New York Foundation for the Arts

K. OSS Contemporary Art is pleased to present a multimedia light installation "Linear Cycle 4" by Detroit based artists Annica Cuppetelli & Cristobal Mendoza. 

“Linear Cycle 4” is a computer-generated animation projected on a frosted vinyl pattern, creating undulating waves of interference.

Cuppetelli and Mendoza are focusing on the creation of site-specific, multimedia installations that address issues of space, interaction and materiality. Their installations combine traditional craft and common materials with interactive digital video projections and computational design process, and they address the formal qualities of a given site while creating an interactive and participatory environment.
Their work has been exhibited in the Denver Art Museum, the Bienal de Video y Artes Mediales in Chile and in festivals such as Nemo 2013 (France), Scopitone 2012 (France), ISEA 2012, FILE 2011 (Brazil), FAD 2011 (Brazil) and video dumbo 2013 and 2011 (New York). They were selected as Kresge Arts in Detroit Fellows for 2015. Cuppetelli received an MFA in Fibers from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Mendoza received an MFA in Digital + Media from the Rhode Island School of Design.

K.OSS CONTEMPORARY ART

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(+1) 248.599.22.32

K.OSS Contemporary Art has been made possible in part by the Artist Fund of the New York Foundation for the Arts

K.OSS Contemporary Art is pleased to present the work of the Detroit sculptor and installation artist Sarah Wagner. The exhibition “Whether Ewe Like It or Not” is a part of a recent art installation “Vegetable Lamb Of America” which was recently exhibited at the Muskegon Museum of Art, MI.

In her new show at K.OSS Contemporary Art, Sarah Wagner: Whether Ewe Like It or Not, I am very excited to introduce you to the most recent work that Wagner created to explore her observations and struggles with the de-humanizing systems of the industrial world.

Inspired by the history of the cultivation of cotton, and its devastating impact on the development of capitalism and industrialism in the United States and beyond, she created a complex of sculptures made of fabric, steel from industrial buildings, drywall and concrete.

Throughout her fascinating career Wagner has explored themes of the manmade disasters, pollution, devastation and its impact on human beings, animal life and plant species. Her work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally and has been reviewed in Art Week and Art Papers. She received a Pollock/Krasner Grant and a Joan Mitchell Fellowship. She holds a BFA degree from the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga and a MFA from the College of the Arts, California.

K.OSS CONTEMPORARY ART

www.kossgallery.com

(+1) 248.599.22.32

K.OSS Contemporary Art has been made possible in part by

the Artist Fund of the New York Foundation for the Arts

For my next exhibition I’m very pleased to bring you the work of the fine artist and sculptor, Mary Gillis.

Born in Michigan, keen to become an artist, she traveled to Venice, Italy in her early 20's to study art and art history at the Centro Internazionale delle Arti, Palazzo Grassi. Mary Gillis also holds a BFA degree from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY and a MA from New York University. She was recently a visiting artist of the American Academy in Rome in 2016.

Gillis’ style has evolved from large pastel drawings, collages and prints to paintings and large-scale sculptures to mixed media, work on aluminum and even recycled guardrail.

Through the whole of her remarkable career nature, especially water, has had a great impact on her work. The “Venice Drawings”, “Great Lakes Series”, and “Fountain Collages” reflect her passion for the rhythms and dynamism of moving water.

In her new show at K.OSS Contemporary Art, Mary Gillis: Metalscapes, I am delighted to introduce you to a series of her abstract geometric pieces that Gillis created using thermoset polymer on aluminum, acrylic paint on acrylic glass, stainless steel and a couple of guardrails. This unusual mixture of mediums creates a world both totally new and reflective of the past. These startling effects she creates by using acrylic on clay-coated hardboard as well as thermoset polymer on recycled guardrail. The works clearly convey the influence of the early modern art movement, De Stijl –an abstract, pared-down aesthetic with basic visual elements such as geometric forms and primary colors –but Gillis adds to them a contemporary sensibility. Her combination of reflective surfaces and thoughtful order brings the viewer a new sense of form and reflected space.

I will also be showing a work that will definitely be a surprise for you, a work created by patterns of rectangles made of recycled guardrails ordered into a grid. It reflects many of the innovations and themes of the other works of this exhibition. As you study the details of this remarkable piece, its patterns keep everything in motion and as your eye moves around its varied visual world, along the black bands of its structure, into the bright primary colors and whites that frame its ordered edges, it creates its own thoughtful energies.

Simple and powerful, confidently modern, these works took GIllis many years of experimentation and hard work before she was ready to create them.

K.OSS CONTEMPORARY ART

www.kossgallery.com

(+1) 248.599.22.32

K.OSS Contemporary Art has been made possible in part by

the Artist Fund of the New York Foundation for the Arts

For my first exhibition I’m especially pleased to bring you the work of an artist I have followed for over a decade - catching his impressive shows in both San Francisco and Paris. His unusual career includes a role as dancer with the Jose Limon Company (1957), his first painting shows in Montreal and Boston, creating a painting studio in San Francisco (1964) where he also contributed to the underground film scene. He directed two avant-guard feature films in the 70’s and is also known as an innovator in opera, one of the first to combine film and projection in theater. He is also known as an educator - his SF Art & Film for Teenagers, is dedicated to inspiring young people to experience all the arts and celebrates its 25th anniversary this year.

But it is as a painter I find his work the most inspiring.

PAINTING:

It’s hard to think of Chase as a minimalist, though his work in the last ten years reflects many minimal influences. His concentration on the grid pattern has been constant, though there are variations of size and shape,. Some of the works gain strength from the play of sold versus fluid elements. Grids are often constructed to suggest the sides of ancient walls, bulging or contracting with wear. The result is often like a bas-relief, but in the same composition pattern can disappear with a suggestion of decay, whether it suggests rain or damage over time. Everywhere there is a focus on contrast – solid and liguid; darkness and light; decay and suggested renewal.

The grid patterns are often used to organize three dimensional shapes created by layers of underpainting, forming patterns one on the other. The constant play of constructed and fluid space allows the eye to linger or be lost in the subtle details. His interest in what he has referred to as “ the patina that nature and decay create over time” is reflected in many different ways. In some of the work, the grid motif is interrupted by lines of bright red, suggesting arteries, in others, the grid seems to be the outlines of shapes holding the composition in place, or ghost-like reflections of something erased from memory. In complex white works the patterns created by pencil, crayon, paint & plaster move back and forth in space, always stimulating the eye with new pockets of energy.

PAPER:

The large watercolors were begun in 2014, inspired by childhood memories of collecting specimens from nature. They, too, are ordered into grids, but some playfully mix the shapes Chase has often referred to as “essential geometry” --the square, rectangle, circle and triangle. Their influence from nature allows the viewer to imagine what they might be- the watercolor technique allows the shapes simultaneously to be both transparent, enigmatic and evocative.

A series of small collages in his “White” series—work I especially value. They are, in contrast to the enormous paintings, very intimate and delicate, almost like visual poems - small compositions of paper, writing, old stamps, etc. set in large negative spaces. White on white on white --they show another side of this remarkable imagination.

K.OSS CONTEMPORARY ART

www.kossgallery.com

(+1) 248.599.22.32

K.OSS Contemporary Art has been made possible in part by

the Artist Fund of the New York Foundation for the Arts