One and Three Sculptures

Our current gallery show, "One and Three Sculptures", curated by Tessa Wick features work by Katayoun Amjadi, Nathanael Flink, Kara Jelinek, Janet Lobberecht, and Joe Smith.

Opening Reception: Friday March 17th, 6 - 9pm

Regular Gallery Hours: Thurs, Fri, Sat 12 PM - 5 PM (and/or by appt)

ONE AND THREE SCULPTURES is up through Saturday, April 15th. 

ONE AND THREE SCULPTURES | ARTIST STATEMENTS/BIOS

CURATED BY TESSA WICK

KATAYOUN AMJADI

Katayoun Amjadi is an Iranian-born, Minneapolis-based artist, educator, and independent curator. In her work, she often considers the sociopolitical systems that shape our perceptions of Self and Other, such as language, religion, gender, politics, and nationalist ideologies. She blurs these boundaries and creates an off-balance, hybrid style, slightly acerbic and a little bit tongue-in-cheek. Her art probes the relationship between past and present, tradition and modernity, and individual versus collective identity, and simultaneously seeks to spur discussion about our place in the temporal arc and the interwoven roots of our histories. Amjadi holds an MFA in ceramics and sculpture from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and has been the recipient of 20/21 MCAD-Jerome Emerging Artist Fellowship. Her performative installation work will be part of a group exhibition titled Underneath Everything: Humility and Grandeur in Contemporary Ceramics at the Des Moines Art Center from June 2–September 10, 2023.

I work primarily as an installation artist. In my work, I seek to draw on multiple cultural histories in ways that explore ideological limitations, and investigate broader global concerns including nationalism, identity, history, memory, borders, safety, the comfort and unpredictability of home and world, and the poetics of creative expression; synthetic, hybrid, and vital.

Through my practice I draw on multiple cultural histories in order to investigate broader global concerns including identity formation in diaspora, nationalism, history, memory, and language. My primary discipline is ceramics and installation, yet my work encompasses other artistic media including printmaking, social practice, performance and video art. As artist and maker, I believe in the latent power of objects to speak. They are embedded with the history of their origin, making and culture. They can carry multiple associations yet also personal and collective meanings as signifiers of a place, time or memory. They are fundamental to my research, indeed they are the structural syllables of the language of my practice.

NATHANAEL FLINK

Nathanael Flink is an artist based in Minnesota. He earned a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1994. Flink has been the recipient of the Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship and the Knight Foundation Arts Challenge Grant. He has exhibited his work in solo exhibitions in South Korea and Minnesota and group exhibitions in New York, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Vermont. His work is held in private collections in North America and Asia.

My work blurs the barrier between disciplines. Like graffiti on the side of a train, the material of the object contributes to the aesthetic experience as much as the gesture. The material is the idea, existing within a painting framework, but not perceptible solely "as a painting." I endeavor to manufacture surprise, to challenge viscerally – sometimes nostalgically – through pattern and a reminiscence to household objects. The shapes and asymmetrical compositional structures reveal contrary and paradoxical elements – I try to expose unobvious relationships. As Jean-Luc Marion writes ...to let burst into the scene much more than what one desires or wills.

More specifically, my work currently exhibited involves a series of sculptures in which objects experienced in domestic life are appropriated through cast plaster and surface treatment. As an evolving vocabulary evoking familiarity, my interest in the relationships and play between form reveals a primordial experience. The work explores the boundaries between disciplines, and recontextualizes recognizable objects through various devices of perception. The objects’ surfaces and edges retain a physicality through reclamation and transformation.

These relics arose from an investigation of formal volume. This series employs discarded plastic food containers to serve as templates for cast plaster of Paris. Additionally, the sculptures are coated with a blue enamel-- often utilized to paint the outlines of handicap parking spaces. The imprints formed are eerily human while also evocative of faces of the nineteen eighties 'Transformers' animated television program referencing memory and aesthetic situations.

KARA JELINEK 

Kara Jelinek is a self-taught artist based in Fargo, ND. Combining illustration and yarn, she creates hand tufted floor and wall rugs. Through her work, Jelinek seeks to initiate contemplation circulating around softness and brutality, functionality and impracticality, as well as balance between traditional and modern values. Jelinek is currently working towards coalescing her interest in textiles, illustration, and sculptural works for her creative endeavor, Soft Spot.

JANET LOBBERECHT

Janet Lobberecht is an artist working in Minneapolis, MN. Primarily, her work sits somewhere between painting and drawing. The complex precariousness of our world and envisioning lost futures are what she thinks of most when working. Janet holds an MFA in Transdisciplinary Design from Parsons/The New School for Design, where she focused on systems and urban ecologies. She has received a Minnesota Artist Initiative Grant, the McKnight Visual Arts Fellowship and the Jerome Emerging Artist Fellowship.

JOE SMITH

Joe Smith (b. 1970) received his MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1998 and has been the recipient of several grants and fellowships, including The McKnight Fellowship for Visual Artists, the Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant, and The Jerome Travel Grant. Smith's abstractions and still-lifes explore the impact of weight and gesture as a means to open up psychological spaces. Each element in his work is charged with restraining and driving forces that reveal the gaps between the physical, mental, and the metaphysical. Smith has exhibited in numerous venues, including Midway Contemporary Art; the FRONT International Triennial curated by Michelle Grabner in Cleveland, OH; David Petersen Gallery in the Twin Cities, and The Suburban and Julius Caesar in Chicago. He currently lives and works in Minneapolis.