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News:
Devouring Time
Western Bridge, Seattle, Washington
Curated by Mario Diacono
February 17 – April 7, 2012
Kutlug Ataman, Walead Beshty, Raymond Boisjoly, Matt Browning, Roger Hiorns, Alex Schweder La, Amanda Ross-Ho, Matt Sheridan Smith, Kara Tanaka, Mungo Thomson, Dan Webb, Mark Wyse, Amir Zaki
The First Rebellion is History. Next Week Rome Falls
Simon Preston Gallery, New York
Curated by Mario Diacono
January 15 – February 26, 2012
Daniel Joseph Martinez, Michelle Lopez, Jessica Mein, Marco Rios, Kara Tanaka, Caragh Thuring, Josh Tonsfeldt
Simon Preston is delighted to present The First Rebellion is History, Next Week Rome Falls, a group exhibition of new work by gallery artists that celebrates the gallery's four year anniversary. Kara Tanaka has transformed a cowhide into an abstracted map by shaving and carving onto the skin, illustrating the search for both physical and mythical mountain systems. Tanaka's use of animal hides draws a parallel to the Tibetan iconographic image of flayed skin as a symbol for the destruction of the ego.
Bent-Light Night
Las Cienegas Projects, Los Angeles
September 10 - October 8, 2011
Until the advent of flight, the mountain summit was the closest humans could get to the heavens, the home of their gods or their notion of the beyond. The search for Mount Analogue, a mythical destination that first appeared in René Daumal's surrealist novel Mount Analogue: A Tale of Non-Euclidean and Symbolically Authentic Mountaineering Adventures, began with two simple principles: first, that there exists a mountain where humans can connect with the divine, and second, that the base of that mountain must be accessible to humans by the means inherent to their nature.
Las Cienegas Projects is pleased to present Bent-Light Night, a new sculptural installation by Kara Tanaka. Influenced by the historical search for secret locations and spiritual lands, both fictional and real, Tanaka was first drawn to the symbol of the mountain through Alejandro Jodorowsky's cult classic film, The Holy Mountain, and through Daumal's novel. Both narratives feature a team of adventurers who set out to find a mythical mountain and draw heavily on traditions of mysticism, polytheistic religions, Vedic traditions and early mythologies. In these stories - and countless others - the mountain is used as a symbol to propel humans beyond their limits physically, philosophically, experientially and intellectually.
Synthetic Ritual
Pitzer Art Galleries, Pitzer College
Curated by Gabi Scardi and Ciara Ennis
September 28 - December 9, 2011
Mounira Al Solh, Meris Angioletti, Beatrice Catanazro, Marcus Coates Joel Kyack, Lawrence Lemaoana, Yoshua Okon, Adrian Paci, Marco Rios, Kara Tanaka, Carlin Wing, Amir Yatziv.
Synthetic Ritual brings together a number of Los Angeles and international contemporary artists working in a variety of media including installation, drawing, performance, and video. The artists explore the idea of ritual as a faith-based activity that can be validated only within certain contexts—for example sport, religion and artistic practice—and cannot be rationally proven or substantiated.
The exhibition examines the presence of ritual and superstition in our professional and personal lives and asks why, in such an advanced and sophisticated technological and cyber driven world, ritual still occupies such an important and dominant role. Exploring the three central themes of ritual in relation to sport, religion, and artistic practice the artists provide refreshing and surprising commentary on ritualized behavior in the 21st century.
LANY
Peter Blum Gallery, Chelsea, New York
Curated by Mario Diacono
June 8 - July 29, 2011
Kevin Appel, Andy Cross, Benjamin Degen, James Melinat, Luisa Rabbia, Daniel Rich, Kara Tanaka.
The Los Angeles Initiative
Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles
Rema Hort Mann Foundation, New York
May 10-14, 2011
Nicole Belle, Graham Goddard, Sanya Kantarovsky, Joel Kyack, Nicole Miller, Matt Siegle, David Snyder, Kenneth Tam, Kara Tanaka, Lisa WIlliamson.
Procedural
MacArthur B Arthur, Oakland, California
Curated by Jackie Im and Aaron Harbour
May 6-29, 2011
Miguel Calderon, Chris Cobb, Anthony Discenza, Maggie Haas, Kelly Lynn Jones, MAds Lynnerup, Julio Cesar Morales, Marco Rios, Trevor Shimizu, Chris Sollars, Charlene Tan, Kara Tanaka, Christine Wong Yap.
Hungry Human
(Mountain Hunter)
Simon Preston Gallery, New York
January 16 - February 20, 2011
Simon Preston is pleased to present Kara Tanaka's first solo exhibition at the gallery, comprising a series of sculptures collectively titled 'Hungry Human (Mountain Hunter)'.
Evoking Rene Daumal's bizarre and metaphorical novel 'Mount Analogue', and, in turn, Jodorowsky's 1973 psychedelic cult movie 'The Holy Mountain', 'Hungry Human (Mountain Hunter)' attempts both an historical account of the conquering of scared mountains and the internal quest for a mythical mountain and its promise of Enlightenment. In the front gallery, the shrouded forms of thirteen known sacred mountains physically complicate the path leading toward the gigantic profile of an ethereal insurmountable summit that occupies the entire back gallery. The shrouding of these mountains continues the artist's investigation of the metaphorical distance between the biological human and the metaphysical self or other.
The shortest distance between 2 points is often intolerable
Brand New Gallery, Milan
January 13 - February 26, 2011
Justin Beal, Jedediah Caesar, Liz Craft, Liz Glynn, Patrick Hill, Anthony James, Brian Kennon, Joel Kyack, Anthony Pearson, David Ratcliff, Kara Tanaka, Mateo Tannat, Ryan Trecartin, Jonas Wood.
"As Bukowski once wrote, "The shortest distance between 2 points is often intolerable;" we need the space in which to get lost in, to move but never in a straight line. This is freedom that helps high-minded dryness have a little wit, that lends itself to experimental mysticism and the generative madness of someone by themselves a lot. It's a space that allows unexpected things to happen.
Rather than making a totalizing gesture for a city too big to take one, this exhibition does a sampling of the individuals who make Los Angeles home, an eccentric collection who use the space they find there for their own purposes. This exhibition prefers the inefficiencies of Los Angeles." - Andrew Berardini, curator
A Sad Bit of Fruit, Pickled in the Vinegar of Grief
Collezione Maramotti, Italy
October 23, 2010 - January 31, 2011
Meditation on the disappearance of the human body has strongly marked the artistic practice of Kara Tanaka, the 27-year-old American artist living and working in Los Angeles, and exhibiting in Europe for the first time. The loss, destruction, and denial of the body enable a shift in the focus of vital energy from bodily demands toward a more metaphysical end.
The missing bodies of A Sad Bit of Fruit, Pickled in the Vinegar of Grief, created for Collezione Maramotti, speak of the rejection of immortality, a desire whose ever-present aspiration has permeated Western culture, now declining and experiencing a deep crisis.
California Community Foundation
Artist Fellowship Award, 2010
Represented by Simon Preston Gallery, New York.