You Know What You Know
You Know What You Know
January 10th - January 31, 2024
Opening Receptions
Location 1: KUNSTRAUM - Wednesday, January 10th, 6-8pm
Location 2: Space776 - Friday, January 19th, 6-8pm
Curated by
Christina Massey, KUNSTRAUM Curator-in-Residence 2023-24
Artists
Tatiana Arocha, Jaynie Crimmins, Amanda Konishi, Saskia Krafft, Nadja Verena Marcin
We are pleased to announce "You Know What You Know," a two-site group exhibition that explores women artists and their connection to their embodied knowledge. This exhibition invites viewers on a journey into passionately constructed environments filled with the emotional architecture of natural experiences, sensory conversations and structured unity. Located at both Space776 in Manhattan’s Lower East Side and at the KUNSTRAUM gallery in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, the show highlights the work of five contemporary female-identifying artists who present representational, process-based, tactile, performative and interactive artworks to create two unique exhibition experiences under one theme.
“You Know What You Know” includes artists Tatiana Arocha, Jaynie Crimmins, Amanda Konishi, Saskia Krafft and Nadja Verena Marcin and is curated by KUNSTRAUM’s 2023-24 Curator-in-Residence Christina Massey. Each venue will feature and highlight a different aspect of the artists’ practice, shifting perspectives on their work. On view at the KUNSTRAUM gallery from January 10th – 28th, 2024 and the at Space776 from January 17th – 31st, 2024.
Works on display employ labor-intensive techniques with mediums such as aluminum, gold leaf on canvas, meticulously crafted paper sculptures, collaged paintings, ceramics sewn into silk fabrics as well as digital mobile apps with content libraries. Further layered into the artwork selections is the artists’ shared concern for environmental preservation, global ecosystems and the reshaping of languages. Their socially and economically diverse upbringings, their connection to historical, craft-based mediums as women artists and their educational backgrounds in fine-art related fields, all inform their creative approach.
The exhibition’s theme is inspired by KUNSTRAUM’s mission as a makerspace to serve an array of interdisciplinary artists, including architects, designers, performers and fine artists. Artists in “You Know What You Know” have educational backgrounds spanning from illustration, graphic design, theater arts, filmmaking and arts education. Originating from the US, Germany and Columbia, these multigenerational artists exemplify how personal stories, family connections and birthplace influence an artist’s chosen career path and creative style. Beyond formal training, some of the artists have worked extensively with scientists, engineers and indigenous societies, enriching their work with a multi-layered knowledge that deepens the experience and understanding of their practice; adding a network of insights influenced by place, time and gender.
At Space776, Tatiana Arocha presents "Bosque de niebla,” a large black and white landscape with a gold leaf riverbed inspired by Columbia’s moorlands. This piece is inspired by el páramo de Chingaza, which serves as the origin of the country's water supply and is located close to Arocha’s father’s house. Full of intricate details, viewers are invited to search and discover the diverse ecosystem, flora and fauna. At KUNSTRAUM, Arocha created a small installation that brings the painting into the dimensional world. With her signature black and white palette with hints of gold leaf, artworks at KUNSTRAUM hang from the ceiling and utilize found branches, felts and handmade paper to create an immersive experience.
In contrast, Saskia Krafft’s mixed-media works, also featured at KUNSTRAUM, make use of bold, highly saturated colors. These pieces are created from silks, ceramics, plasma-cut metals and incorporate printmaking techniques. Krafft stretches multiple layers of transparent fabrics over a wooden frame before sewing on various elements. These include glazed ceramic pieces that she calls “platelets” and painted plasma-cut sheet metal that evoke plants native to her hometown in Germany, New York and California. The layering of geometric elements and soft translucent fabrics offers the seductive sensation of peering into the inner depths of the work. Krafft’s works at Space776 are more sculptural with a simplified material selection, created primarily from plasma cut metals and found tree branches. These works, engage the gallery wall through the use of shadow. The negative space between the wall and the work acts as a window to the inner being.
The transition between the two venues reveals further nuanced shifts in form and color within the artworks of Jaynie Crimmins and Amanda Konishi. Crimmins’ sculptural collages at Space776 form a neutrally toned wall installation while at KUNSTRAUM, her pieces are more relief based, colorful and individually displayed. Similarly, Amanda Konishi’s collaged paintings shift in color palettes between the locations and disclose subtle changes in her forms.
At Space776, visitors can interact with Nadja Verena Marcin’s feminist bot, #SOPHYGRAY, derived from extensive research focused on contemporary technology such as Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Ms. Dewey and Hanson’s AI-robot Sophia. In contrast to these male-programmed apps, Marcin’s bot offers engagement with agency, intellect, and often humorous and witty remarks informed by a long list of feminist literature. Viewers can ask the bot anything they desire, including for insight about the artists’ works in the show, her opinion on environmental and social concerns and on art in general. At KUNSTRAUM, Marcin showcases a video of a performance featuring two dancers and audience interactions with the bot, highlighting her desire to empower through knowledge and the potential to influence technology.
In “You Know What You Know,” the convergence of diverse artistic practices, informed by rich personal narratives, educational backgrounds and collaborative experiences creates a captivating mosaic of contemporary artistry. Through meticulous care and craftsmanship, innovative techniques, these five exceptional female artists invite viewers to engage, explore, and contemplate the intersections of art, history, technology and advocacy. This exhibition not only celebrates their individual artistic journeys but also invites audiences to delve into a multi-layered world where creativity and knowledge converge.
About the Artists:
Tatiana Arocha spent 20 years working in the field of Graphic Design before transitioning to her visual art practice. Arocha is originally from Colombia, and the turning point in her career was an opportunity to create a mural for the Sundance Channel that responded to a project based on rainforests in the Amazon. This experience led her to want to dedicate herself to her art and use this as a method to raise awareness about Colombia’s ecosystems and the issues they were facing through deforestation, Climate Change and the excavation of gold and more. Arocha uses her art to delve into the intimate connection between people and the land, drawing from personal memories and her immigration experience to the US in the year of 2000. Arocha employs a diverse range of techniques, including drawing, frottage, mono-printing, photocopying, and digital painting, to craft collaged forest portraits. Her work utilizes a combination of natural materials, such as found branches, hand-made paper and organic raw canvas to ensure an environmentally conscious approach to her creative process. Her monochromatic palette symbolizes a threatened nature, while gold leaf highlights throughout her work symbolize human greed and extractive economies.
Jaynie Crimmins, inspired by her Eastern European Jewish grandparents' ethos of repurposing, meticulously crafts complex paper relief artworks from her own junk mail. Her works serve as a critique of consumerism, shredding catalogs and magazines as evidence of her past purchases. Drawing from the Pattern and Decoration movement, and the movement’s embrace of unpretentiousness, her pieces incorporate craft traditions, texture, inspiration from architecture and commentary on domestic and cultural narratives. Crimmins notes the works of Miriam Shapiro and “femmage” process as significantly influential on her work. This blurring of the distinctions between surface and depth through the use of collage is evident throughout her incredibly detailed and complex relief sculptures. Crimmins, with degrees in Art Education, taught for 26 years. She remained dedicated to educational pursuits, volunteering at the Guggenheim Museum's Learning Through Art Program for another 4 years before the program was suspended during the pandemic. True to her nature as an educator, her works beg for a tutorial and lesson to understand the painstakingly intricate application process and journey through Art History as it relates to women’s work.
Amanda Konishi is currently enrolled in the Science Illustration Graduate Certificate Program at Cal State University Monterey Bay. Her work as an illustrator has greatly influenced her sensibilities of observation and understanding of the systems within nature, including visual systems as well as larger biological and ecological systems. The nature of science illustration is defined by highlighting information that is difficult to emphasize through photography and working to communicate the important elements in those systems while still retaining the character of the subject. In her studio work, this becomes evident in how she chooses where and how to place color, mark-making, different mediums, and how to shape a piece. Konishi’s work explores texture, form, and objecthood in her biomorphic collages made from a combination of drawing and painting on paper mixed with grommets and occasionally fabrics or thread. Her work combines botanical and insect influences, captivating viewers with intricate mark-making and manipulation of form that push beyond the rectangle into a form of objecthood.
Saskia Krafft received an educational background in Theater Studies and Illustration before she turned to the fine arts. Growing up as the daughter of a Theater Wardrobe Director and a Technical Draftsman, she discovered the unique interplay between drawing, garment construction and metalwork. Krafft’s artistic narrative interlaces tales of belonging, migrations, and the transient nature of relationships, highly influenced by the at times nomadic experience of her travels and search for a sense of home. Her artwork delves into both inner and outer worlds, with transparent and negative spaces layered between segmented architectural references. Krafft views these layered elements as akin to sedimentary layers, that come together as evidence of the past and present.
Nadja Verena Marcin is a visual artist, filmmaker and lecturer who explores gender, history, morality, psychology and human behavior through an overarching analysis of feminism and emotional architecture in a theatrical and experiential context. Her hybrid artwork #SOPHYGRAY is an interactive installation that combines performance art, audience participation and a mobile app to subvert stereotypes embedded in humanized AI technologies from a feminist perspective. Marcin collaborated with more than 40 engineers, technicians, programmers, writers, dancers, curators, and visual artists to develop the bot, which is trained to have conversations about identity, art and feminism. The bot's content library was created by inputting thousands of training phrases and responses and enriched with feminist texts and theories.
KUNSTRAUM LLC is a gallery, artist hub, and studio space located near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Engaging artists, architects, curators, designers, filmmakers and writers, we are an interdisciplinary community that seeks to redefine the way creatives and curators collaborate. We offer thought-provoking exhibitions, public programs, networking opportunities, research, affordable studio space, curatorial fellowships, artist residencies, and discourse for creative production. By opening our gallery to different art professionals interested in engaging ideas, unconventional thinking, and risk-taking, KUNSTRAUM pushes the parameters of emerging, international, contemporary art.
KUNSTRAUM's programs are supported, in part, by Art in General. The exhibition is a culmination of KUNSTRAUM’s Curator-in-Residence program 2023-24.
Space776 exhibits early to mid-career artists who work in a variety of mediums ranging from live multimedia performance art to traditional oil painting. The gallery accommodates artists from around the globe, taking their works to local and international art fairs such as Volta New York, Volta Basel, Art Miami, Palm Beach Modern + Contemporary, and Art Busan.
Space776 was founded in Bushwick, Brooklyn in 2013. In 2020, the gallery relocated to its current residence at 37-39 Clinton Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Space776 also opened a location in Seoul, South Korea in 2020 in accordance with the gallery’s mission to promote the international exchange between local New York artists and the Korean artistic sphere.
PUBLIC PROGRAMS
Opening Receptions:
KUNSTRAUM: Wednesday, January 10th, 6-8pm
Space776: Friday, January 19th, 6-8pm
Artist Talk:
Space776: Friday, January 26th, 5-6pm
Closing Reception & Curator Tour:
KUNSTRAUM: January 28th, 4-6pm
LOCATIONS:
Address: KUNSTRAUM LLC, 20 Grand Ave, Loft 509, Brooklyn, NY 11205
Hours: Saturday - Monday, 2-6pm, by appointment only – please contact us first!
Contact: Christina Massey | christina@kunstraumllc.com
Social Media: Facebook, Instagram: @kunstraumllc, #kunstraumllc
Address: Space776, 37-39 Clinton Street, New York, NY 10002
Hours Tuesday - Sunday, 12-6pm
Contact: Christina Massey | christina@kunstraumllc.com
Social Media: Facebook, Instagram: @space_776 #space776
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KUNSTRAUM's programs are supported, in part, by Art in General.
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