Image courtesy of Megan Mueller. Flyer design by Crystal Dawana
Apostrophe
December 3, 2023 - January 21, 2024
Opening Reception: Sunday Dec 3, 2-5pm. Beverages & music generously provided by Village
Featuring works by: Rebeca Bollinger, Conrad Guevara, Kendall Henderson, Bessie Kunath, Megan Mueller, Amy Nathan, Gay Outlaw, Helia Pouyanfar, and Lucy Puls.
Personal Space is pleased to present its third exhibition, Apostrophe. Drawing inspiration from the title’s connotations of fragmenting and condensing language, as well as its suggestion of possession, the nine artists presented here collect traces of memory. Their poetic, and often mysterious, tendencies capture fragments to suggest a whole, rendering and recording aspects of human vulnerability, identity, and intimacy through a mix of photography, sculpture, painting, and collage. In doing so, these works act as open-ended observations that prioritize the absence of a subject, inviting the viewer to complete the story.
The exhibition includes two works as part of Personal Space’s ongoing New Works series: a poem by Mihee Kim and the gallery’s rotating exterior sign space by Amy Nathan.
Rebeca Bollinger combines photography; ceramics; cast and poured bronze, aluminum, and glass; drawing; sound; sculptural projections of light and video; writing; installation; artist books; and improvisational music. Her process involves material translations between representation and abstraction; locating points of meaning and obfuscation; and identifying points of recognition to give form to that which was previously invisible and is grounded in the idea of clairvoyance, translated directly from the French as “clear seeing.”
Rebeca Bollinger’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; The Armory Show, NYC; Ballroom Marfa, TX; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA; Art in the Anchorage | Creative Time, Brooklyn, NY; Walter Maciel Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Feigen Contemporary, NYC; Rena Bransten Gallery, fused space/Jessica Silverman Gallery, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Gallery 16, and [ 2nd floor projects ], San Francisco, CA; UC Berkeley Pacific Film Archive; Republic Gallery, Vancouver, BC; Mills College Art Museum, Oakland, CA; Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Norway; Museum Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany and other venues. She is a recipient of a SECA Award in Electronic Media from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Artadia Award, James D. Phelan Award in Video, NEA Creation & Presentation Grant with The LAB, Eureka Fellowship from the Fleishhacker Foundation, Headlands Artist-in-Residence Award, Art+Process+Ideas Artist-in-Residence Award at Mills College with the Mills College Art Museum, and Night Bloom: Grants for Artists, MOCA Tucson, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Conrad Guevara (b. 1986, Tacoma, WA) is currently based in Los Angeles, CA with recent exhibitions with Night Gallery at NADA EAST, New York, pied-à-terre, San Francisco and Anthony Meier Fine Art, Mill Valley, CA. Conrad is also one third of Bonanza, a collaborative practice with L. Williams and L. Tully.
Kendall Henderson, born in Colorado 1989, growing up in Birmingham Alabama to then graduate from the Savannah College of Art and Design with a B.F.A. in Graphic Design, and since spending a major portion of his career in applied arts. Now living and working in Brooklyn New York Henderson's interdisciplinary practice consists of works that probe the limits of perception by facilitating an object’s transcendence to importance.
Bessie Kunath (b. 1981, Orange, CA.) Kunath holds a MFA in studio art from University of California Santa Barbara, and a BA in art and a MA in education from the University of San Francisco. In 2020, she acquired a Bachelor of Science in nursing from Drexel University and currently works at UCLA in the Neuro-Trauma ICU. Kunath has participated in exhibitions in San Francisco, Oakland, Orange County, CA, Los Angeles, New York, Finland, Salt Lake City, Tokyo and recently - Cleveland. She has worked in the arts in San Francisco and Los Angeles and is a founding member of LA-based curatorial collective, Manual History Machines.
Megan Mueller (b. 1982) lives and works in Los Angeles, California. She received an MFA in Studio Art from the University of California at Santa Barbara (2015), a BFA in Sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University (2008) and a BA in Political Science from George Washington University (2004). Mueller’s work has been exhibited at various national and international venues including The Fulcrum Press, The Brand Library, Charlie James Gallery, Noysky Projects, Dalton Warehouse, Field Projects, New Wight Gallery at UCLA, High Desert Test Tests, GLAMFA, Transformer, TSV Berlin, the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art.
Amy Nathan is an artist working in sculpture, painting and installation; her practice asks questions about how meaning can be expressed through visual languages. Her work has been exhibited at CULT Aimee Friberg, Headlands Center for the Arts, /room/, Saint Joseph’s Arts Society, AORA London, Traywick Contemporary, Root Division, Facebook, and the International Sculpture Center. Nathan holds an MFA from Mills College and was a Graduate Fellow at Headlands Center for the Arts.
San Francisco based artist Gay Outlaw is recognized for her rigorous and unexpected explorations of material—from printmaking and photography to sculpture made of wood, glass, caramelized sugar, and bronze. For this exhibition, she employs a range of materials to create a dialogue between shape, color, surface, and interiority. Outlaw’s keen observation of the everyday world is evidenced in her photographs. Images and ideas from these are collated and translated into sculpture, lending the viewer a fresh and insightful perspective on our environment and the objects that surround us. New to her practice are a group of photo assemblages—a direct combination of her original photographs with sculptural elements that the artist calls “puddles” of glass. Also featured are free-standing sculptures, which spring from Outlaw’s dialogue with photography and again connect to both the material and structures of her earlier work. Working intuitively, Outlaw regularly circles back to her photographs as well as her previous sculptures, mining their content and forms for new strategies and insights. Born in 1959 in Mobile, Alabama, Gay Outlaw received her BA in 1981 from the University of Virginia. She attended the École de Cuisine La Varenne, Paris, France (1981–82) and took courses at the International Center of Photography (1987–88). Her glass work, in particular, benefits from two Pilchuck residencies, in Seattle, in 2007 and 2014, and a Tacoma Museum of Glass residency in 2009. She is represented by Anglim Gilbert Gallery in San Francisco.
Born in 1995 in Tehran, Iran, Helia Pouyanfar immigrated to California in 2014. Inspired by her cultural background, her architectural sculptures utilize materials such as wallpaper, suitcases, bricks, cement, doors, and windows. In an examination of passage and the relationship between liminal spaces and transit, her research endeavors to illustrate and investigate the permanently transient state of the refugee body and its negotiation and reconciliation with Place. Pouyanfar has been the recipient of multiple awards, including the Lauren Krikorian Memorial Prize and Certificate of Excellence in Sculpture from UC Berkeley, Mary Lou Osborn Award and the 2021 Margrit Mondavi Graduate Fellowship from UC Davis, 2024 Berkeley Civic Arts Individual Artist Grant, and 2024 Kala Art Institute Fellowship. Her work has been exhibited at the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, de Young Museum, Skirball Cultural Center, Miami University, Root Division, Southern Exposure, Berkeley Art Center, Foyer-LA, and SF Camerawork. She currently resides and maintains an art studio practice in the Bay Area.
Lucy Puls received her M.F.A. from Rhode Island School of Design. Her work is represented in numerous collections including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Oakland Museum, The Berkeley Art Museum (BAMPFA), the Crocker Museum, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, and the Jewish Museum in New York. Puls is a Professor Emeritus of Art at the University of California at Davis. She lives and works in Berkeley, California. Represented by Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York.
Image Credit: Bessma Khalaf and Jordan Benton. Personal Space, Vallejo, CA 2023.