devening projects is very pleased to present K.R.F, a show of new work by Isabel Kerkermeier, Kaveri Raina and Wolfgang Flad. The exhibition opens with a reception for the artists on Sunday May 14th and continues until June 17th.

Berlin-based artist Isabel Kerkermeier produces wall works that burst and melt off the walls they occupy. There are many references here to painting, but the work never stays comfortably within this context. By peeling, tearing and stripping away surface layers typically constructed from printed banners and other malleable material, she creates fields of textural and ephemeral space. The resulting web of vertical and horizontal tatters, whose points of intersection flicker in and out of transparency, give the impression of a digital mirage, but is in fact energized materiality. Minute fissures in the surface of the image produce both linear drawing and sculptural form, a complex bundle of images occupying three-dimensional space and comprised of a series of semi-transparent layers. The final element in the equations becomes the concrete parameters of the exhibition space in which the viewer is standing.

In her compelling and visceral new paintings Chicago artist Kaveri Raina explores the often-conflicting dichotomy of her hybridized identity and the pictorial push-and-pull of Western Modernism. Raina connotes the complex experience of being located between two cultures by highlighting the permeable surface of burlap as she paints from both the back and front of the rough and porous fabric. Matter and material serve as principle metaphors in work constructed through the lens of body, land and psyche. Her process challenges the viewer to locate and orient oneself to front or back while being fully immersed in surface. For Raina, painting on the reverse of her support creates a level of uncertainty in which the reward is ultimately recognized by the striking outcome when one releases control.

Wolfgang Flad’s new series of relief works explore both color gradients and the literal energy of a mark left by a brush. Similar to calligraphy, Flad’s brush strokes are about the visualization of emotions and aesthetic perfection. The relief series is therefore the result of an investigation of a single moment. Flad’s gestures will be shown in two variations: “Negative Reliefs”; wall works carved into wooden panels and “Positive Reliefs” composed of elements carved out of the same wooden material which are then applied directly to the wall; the wall reliefs might be considered a physical and conceptual counterpoint to the negative relief. Naturally, only the negative reliefs explore color environments and include the wood edge as a chromatic experience. Wolfgang Flad lives and works in Berlin.

Isabel Kerkermeier lives in Berlin, Germany. She shows regularly at Gallery Hammelehle and Ahrens in Cologne and Gallery Grölle pass: projects in Wuppertal, Germany. Her numerous solo and group exhibitions include projects at Georg Kolbe Museum Berlin, Galerie der Stadt Stuttgart, UGM Maribor Slovenien, and many other kunstvereins and galleries. Kerkermeier studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart where she studied with Guiseppe Spagnulo and H. Baumann.
groelle.de/kerkermeier

Kaveri Raina was born and raised in New Delhi, India and moved to the US at the age of eleven. Raina has received several awards and fellowships including the James Nelson Raymond Fellowship, the Fred and Joanna Lazarus Scholarship, among others. Her work has been exhibited in the US, India and Germany; in the summer of 2017, she will be attending the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She received her MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2016 and her BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2011. Kaveri Raina lives and works in Chicago.
kaveriraina.com

Wolfgang Flad is a German sculptor based in Berlin. In the last decade his work has been shown at various museums, galleries, and art spaces throughout US, Europe, and Israel. Recently he was part of a group exhibition at Max-Lang-Gallery in New York. His work is held in numerous private and institutional collections, such as the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart in Germany, the Kunsthaus Zürich in Switzerland, the Centraal Museum Utrecht in the Netherlands, and the Tampa Museum of Art in Florida. The Tampa Museum of Art project features a large scale installation that will be on view for two years.
wolfgangflad.de

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Tags: Chicago, Devening Projects, East Garfield Park, Isabel Kerkermeier, Kaveri Raina, Wolfgang Flad K.R.F.