Event
Thursday, June 23 - Wednesday, July 27, 2022
Hours: 10:00 – 18:00
Closed:Sunday, Monday
Admission:free
Venue
Sokyo Gallery
http://gallery-sokyo.jp
Access:381-2 Komoto-mae, Yamato-oji, Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto
Tel:(+81) 75-746-4456
Overview
Sokyo Gallery, and Sokyo Annex (Kyoto) are pleased to present “Kristen Morgin: 21st Century Works 2001- 2019.”
Following her successful solo exhibition at SOKYO ATSUMI in Tokyo in this spring, Kristen Morgen’s works will now be on display in Kyoto in her first solo exhibition here, featuring early works from 2001 to recent works from 2019. This exhibition offers a more in-depth glimpse into her explorations over the years.
Based in Los Angeles, Morgin uses unfired clay to create works that represent objects and icons that evoke personal or collective memories, such as picture books, toys, Donald Duck, Yoda, and Brad Pitt. Using paint, ink, graphite, and markers on clay to create weathered, worn, and tattered surfaces, she invites the viewer’s nostalgia.
My works are delicate things that express the preciousness, nobility and stubborn-headedness of matter that resists its own inevitable demise in spite of its dilapidated condition and predestined downfall.
-Kristen Morgin
In several works, clay objects that look like plywood or cardboard scraps are positioned next to actual cardboard or plywood counterparts, further confusing what is real and what is fabricated. The effect of Morgin’s eye-fooling craftsmanship is to increase our sensitivity to the physical world around us and to perhaps change one’s perceptions of the things in the world. Influenced by Francisco Goya, Philip Guston, Vincent van Gogh and others, Morgin also inserts direct expressions of American political and social issues into her work.
Kristen Morgin
Kristen Morgin was born in 1968 in Brunswick, GA, U.S.A. and now works in Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A. She graduated from California State University, Hayward, CA, U.S.A. in 1993 and received her MFA from Alfred University, School of Ceramics, Alfred, NY, U.S.A. in1997.
Her recent solo exhibitions include; Jennifer Anistonʼs Used Book Sale, Felix Art Fair, Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A. (2019); Thereʼs No Need to Fear, Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Beverly Hills, CA, U.S.A. (2017); My Best to You, Little Girl ‒ Boy, Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San Francisco, CA, U.S.A. (2016); SO IT GOES, A-B Projects, Scripps College, Claremont, CA, U.S.A. (2016), and more. Her mainly group exhibitions include; A Dead Reckoning: Navigating Contemporary Ceramics, Pensacola Museum of Art, Pensacola, FL, U.S.A. (2021); Total Collapse: Clay in the Contemporary Past, Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe, AZ, U.S.A. (2020); Interstitial, Pasadena Museum of California Art, Pasadena, CA, U.S.A. (2017); Visions and Revisions: Renwick Invitational 2016, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, U.S.A. (2016); Unmonumental: The object in the 21st Century, The New Museum, New York, NY, U.S.A. (2007); Thing: New Sculpture from Los Angeles, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A. (2005) and more.
Collections include; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA, U.S.A.; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C. U.S.A., and more.
In 2005, she received Joan Mitchell Award.
