Remembering Is Everything

A Group Exhibition with Yayoi Asoma, David Kasprzak, Kate Nartker, Nancy Nowacek,
Melody Owen, and Stephen Slappe.

Guest curated by Bean Gilsdorf and A. Will Brown

January 17 – February 23, 2013

(opening reception Friday, January 18 at 7-10pm)

Group Exhibition

"Woman Reads While Waiting" and "Shoes in Elevator" by Melody Owen. 2012.

"79 Maujer (kitchen)" by Yayoi Asoma. 2012.

"79 Maujer (hallway)" by Yayoi Asoma. 2012.

Detail of "We Are The Ones We Have Been Waiting For" by David Kasprzak. 2012.

Detail of "Circuit (As I Caught)" by Nancy Nowacek. 2012-2013.

Detail of "Bad Religion" by Stephen Slappe. 2012.

Detail of "It was a perfectly fine day" by Kate Nartker. 2012.

Remembering Is Everything gallery map

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Remembering is Everything features commissioned works by six American artists. In the fall of 2012, all of the artists were shown an original video created by the curators as a prompt to memory. Then, each was asked to formulate a response using the video’s structure and elements to create works that centered on their remembrances. The artists were asked to consider the video as they would any other witnessed event; and after they viewed the video, it was destroyed. This experimental exhibition was inspired in part by the 2011 New York Times bestseller Moonwalking with Einstein. In this book, author Joshua Foer asserts three points that connect memory directly to the production of art:

we don’t remember isolated facts, we remember things in context;
memory is shaped by sensory information in a “feedback loop”: everything we see and hear is inflected by everything we’ve seen and heard in the past;
we remember events that are repeated, structured, and easily visualized.

In fact, Foer summarizes his findings in the book’s epilogue by stating, “How we perceive the world and how we act in it are products of how and what we remember. We’re all just a bundle of habits shaped by memories… No lasting joke, invention, insight, or work of art was ever produced by an external memory.” The works in this exhibition span a wide range of media from painting to performance, reflecting the artists’ interests in memory, perception, narrative, and representation.

Remembering is Everything includes work by artists Yayoi Asoma (New York), David Kasprzak (San Francisco), Kate Nartker (San Francisco), Nancy Nowacek (New York), Melody Owen (Portland, OR), and Stephen Slappe (Portland, OR). This exhibition was collaboratively curated by Bean Gilsdorf and A. Will Brown.

About the Artists:

Yayoi Asoma lives and works in Brook- lyn, NY. She received her BFA in painting from RISD and her MFA in visual arts from Rutgers University. Recent exhibitions include CUE Art Foundation, New York, NY; The Work Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Leo Fortuna Gallery, Hudson, NY. Her work has been reviewed in the New York Times. In addition to teaching at Manhattan- ville College, Asoma is an instructor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

David Kasprzak is an artist, curator, and writer currently based in San Fran- cisco. He is part of the collective Will Brown, operating an experimental exhi- bition space in San Francisco. He holds an MA in Curatorial Practice from the California College of the Arts. Recent projects have included 101: Route 3 for the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts and 3020 Laguna Street: In Exi- tium, an exhibition that was held in a condemned residence in San Francisco.

Kate Nartker received her MFA from the California College of the Arts. She was the recipient of a Phelan, Murphy & Cadogan Fellowship from The San Francisco Foundation, as well as the Arts Award from the Northwest Area Arts Council. Nartker has exhibited throughout the Bay Area and interna- tionally in Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, and Germany. She currently lives in San Francisco and teaches at San Francisco State University.

Nancy Nowacek recently completed residencies at the NARS Foundation in Brooklyn and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council on Governors Island. Her work has been exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, the Bay Area, Can- ada, and Europe. Nowacek’s practice examines contemporary body schema, incorporating principles of situated ex- perience and embodied learning; using the body as a tool, an object, a channel, and ultimately as a site of imagination. Nowacek is based in New York City.

Melody Owen is based in Portland, OR. She has participated in artist residencies in Iceland, Paris, Quebec, Switzerland, New York State, and Eastern Oregon. Owen is represented by Elizabeth Leach Gallery and has also had solo shows at Nine Gallery, PDX Gallery, Reed College, and Marylhurst University. She is a member of Boat House Studios in Portland.

Stephen Slappe is the is Chair of Video & Sound at Pacific Northwest Col- lege of Art in Portland, OR. He has exhibited and screened in venues such as Centre Pompidou-Metz, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s TBA Festival, The Horse Hospital (London), Consolidated Works (Seattle), Centre for Contemporary Art (Glasgow). His projects have been funded by multiple grants, including an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Oregon Arts Com- mission.

Bean Gilsdorf (San Francisco)

A. Will Brown (San Francisco)

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was founded in 2012 by Koak and Kevin Krueger. We offer a multi-use space which currently functions as our studios, a main exhibitions space, printshop, a permanent museum installation called the Bowery, and is also home to the Peephole Gallery.
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