Rotem Reshef, Cascades, 2022
Traces
September 2 - 21
With works by Nicki Cherry, Jacq Groves, Kumi Kaguraoka, Nicole Ji Soo Kim, Diyar Mayil, Rotem Reshef, Daniel Shieh, Kate Wallace, Huidi Xiang
Opening Reception & Open Studios: Friday, September 2, 5-8pm
NARS Main Gallery
NARS Foundation is proud to present “Traces” a series of diverse works investigating our everyday lives and its invisible traces put in context to the greater complex of nature and being. Through sculpture, painting, installation and text the nine artists explore topics such as labor, memory, grief and displacement.
“Traces” explores the both visible and invisible patterns that construct our everyday lives. Cause and effect is explored both as a reflection and power play within commercial and everyday life observations but also as a thought of the second chance for life, wherever that may be found. Standardizations as measuring tools for beauty and juxtapositions within nature and our temporal experience of the body is investigated alongside an acceptance of otherness, decay, solitude and discomfort that overlap in this exploration of a fragmented union.
Support for this exhibition generously provided by:
About the artists:
Nicki Cherry (they/she) is a nonbinary artist born in the Midwest and based in New York. After initially studying to become a particle physicist, Cherry received their MFA from Yale School of Art in 2019 and their BA from the University of Chicago in 2014. They presented a solo exhibition at the Border Project Space in July 2021. Group exhibitions include Flux Factory, ELM Foundation and Shin Gallery in New York; AUTOMAT and Icebox Project Space in Philadelphia; and the Reva David Logan Center for the Arts, and Slate Arts and Performance in Chicago. Cherry’s work has been featured in Arte Fuse, Coastal Post, Art of Choice, and Floorr Magazine. Cherry is a 2022 AIM Fellow at the Bronx Museum of Arts.
Jacq Groves is an artist, researcher, and educator currently based in Brooklyn, NY. Their work foregrounds sculptures and installations exploring queer ecology as well as spatial and temporal experiences of the body. In addition to graduating in May, 2022 from Columbia University’s visual arts MFA program, they were the recent recipient of the Joan R. Sovern Sculpture Award and of a Dean's Project Grant. Previously they’ve shown at The Jewish Museum in New York, Edgewood Gallery at Yale University, and The Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans. They recently accepted the Foundation Fellowship for teaching at Pratt Institute this fall. When not in the studio, they are avidly foraging mushrooms.
Kumi Kaguraoka worked at a toy design company, as an art director after graduated with an MFA in Musashino Art University in 2012. Then she started as an artist since 2015. In 2015 she selected as a residence artist by “Bank ART” and held exhibited and her artworks won the Grand Prix at “SICF 16”. Her artworks have been frequently exhibited at Seibu Sogo where is the major department stores in Japan, museums and galleries since 2016. She was selected as an artist to receive funding from the "Istyle Foundation" in 2017. "International Art Science Symposium 2019" sponsored by Kyoto University and Goldsmiths, University of London, her artwork was awarded. Currently, her artworks are featured in overseas media.
Nicole Ji Soo Kim is an interdisciplinary artist based in Toronto, Canada. Her art education began at School of the Arts Institute of Chicago, completing her BFA at Ontario College of Art and Design University in 2020. She has shown in various group shows and participated in Toronto based Roundtable Residency (2020). She is currently a recipient of the Explore and Create: Research and Creation Grant funded by Canada Council for the Arts.
Diyar Mayil is an interdisciplinary artist working in sculpture, installation and performance. Her work explores the public life of marginalized bodies. Comfort, discomfort, adaptation, and the acceptance of different bodies in both public and private are recurring subjects in her practice. Her work has been supported by Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des arts de Montréal and has recently been shown at La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse, Printemps numérique and the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery. Upcoming commitments include residency at the NARS Foundation in NYC and a Solo exhibition at Clark Centre in Montréal. She holds a BFA from Concordia University, where she has recently completed her MFA. She is the 2022 Laureate for the Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Fellowship in Contemporary Art. From Istanbul, she now lives and works in Montreal.
Rotem Reshef is a painter and installation artist based in New York and Tel Aviv, a graduate of Hamidrasha School of Art, Israel, and the Reinwardt Academy, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Her work alludes to forms of life that existed in the world and had been neglected or thrown away, but that get “a second chance” via her artistic practice. Reshef’s paintings and large-scale installations have been shown internationally in solo and group exhibitions, in venues as the Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY; The Laurie M. Tisch Gallery, New York; The Steinhardt Museum of Natural History, Tel Aviv; Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA; Kwan Fong Gallery, California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, CA, among others.
Daniel Shieh’s solo exhibitions include: “Breaths/Touching Slowly” at GSD Kirkland Gallery (Cambridge, MA) and “Familiarly Foreign” at Wave Pool (Cincinnati, OH). His outdoor installations have been exhibited by I-Park Foundation (East Haddam, CT), Franconia Sculpture Park (Shafer, MN), and Josephine Sculpture Park (Frankfort, KY). He has been invited as an artist in residence to the Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris, France), Wassaic Project (Wassaic, NY), MASS MoCA (North Adams, MA), ACRE (Steuben, WI), Anderson Ranch (Snowmass Village, CO), Millay Arts (Austerlitz, NY), Fountainhead (Miami, FL), LMCC Arts Center (Governors Island, NY), Stove Works (Chattanooga, TN), Jamestown Art Center (Jamestown, RI), and Socrates Sculpture Park (Queens, NY). Shieh received an MDes from Harvard University and is based in New York.
Melbourne based artist Kate Wallace looks to record and translate her own experience of place and urban living through the dialogue of representational painting. Using techniques such as scale, cropping, blur, repetition, montage and detail, her works are concerned with the translation of memory and construction of past through painting. Informed by photographs taken in wait or transit, Wallace considers our shared view of the world as an intimate counterpoint to the fast and constant experience of today.
Huidi Xiang (b. Chengdu, China) is an artist and researcher currently based in Brooklyn, New York, USA. She holds an MFA in Art from Carnegie Mellon University (2021) and a BA in Architecture and Studio Art from Rice University (2018). Huidi’s works have been exhibited nationally and internationally, including OCAT Biennale at OCAT Art & Design Gallery, Shenzhen, China, Hive Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, China, Miller ICA in Pittsburgh, PA, USA, Center for Architecture and Design in New Orleans, LA, USA, and South London Gallery in London, UK. Huidi has also completed some artist residencies, including ACRE Residency Program(2021), the Millay Colony for the Arts (2020), and Project Row Houses Summer Studios (2016)
