TuckUnder Projects is very pleased to announce the solo exhibition Practice, featuring the paintings and drawings of Minneapolis visual artist Karen Kasel. Practice/Karen Kasel opens at TuckUnder Projects, Thursday, October 25, 6-9 pm. The exhibition runs October 25-November 25, 2012, with unstructured hours Wednesday through Sunday, and by appointment. Please email info@tuckunder.org to confirm open hours. TuckUnder Projects is located at 5120 York Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN, USA 55410. For further information visit www.TuckUnder.org.
American artist Karen Kasel (Born St. Paul, 1966) is a Minneapolis-based painter whose artwork wanders between the second dimension and into sculptural and public art forms as needed. Kasel began as a self-taught artist in the early 1990’s, and returned to college in 2001 at the College of Visual Arts, in St. Paul, to make her title of artist “official.” In 2006 and 2007, Kasel participated in the Art Shanty Projects with her Shanty of Misfit Toys – an artistic ice-fishing house with transparent walls filled with colorful stuffed animals as insulation and decoration.
Ms. Kasel has been active in the Twin Cities arts community for nearly two decades. Her past activities include: working, curating and volunteering at The Soap Factory, and Gallery Manager at the College of Visual Arts. Her art has been exhibited at Intermedia Arts, Katherine Nash Gallery, Mighty Fine Gallery, Paul Whitney Larson Gallery, Phipps Center for the Arts, and the Pink Bicycle Gallery. A 2004 recipient of the Jerome Travel & Study grant, Kasel currently sits on the board of the Art Shanty Projects.
In Practice, Kasel’s current artistic endeavor is to reestablish her studio practice. For seven years the artist’s mental and physical space has been filled with little voices, toys, dirt, laughter, screaming, meals, dishes, dust bunnies and joy. The inspiration for her work at TuckUnder comes from both the sky and the landscape as a means to find quiet and openness. In beginning her practice again, Kasel thought about how it is sometimes considered art’s “job” is to critique culture. She took that thought on a walk through the woods and decided she did not want that job. She prefers to investigate the clouds and trees, simply for the beauty of the view.
The abstract works shown at TuckUnder are new works on paper. The graphite drawings are simplified and stark, with whimsical lines that create a subtle landscape, as well as an ambiguous space. Other drawings in the show, created with a wide range of wet and dry media including oil paints, oil sticks, graphite, and color pencils, illuminate the coming out process reflecting creative rebirth and domestic rejuvenation.
TuckUnder Projects is a temporary, independent artist exhibition space and sculpture site located within the Fulton neighborhood of Southwest Minneapolis. As an alternative, hybridic home-based contemporary gallery, TuckUnder Projects specializes in unrecognized emerging artists and curatorial collaborators, tactical institutional critique, participatory initiatives and conceptual curatorial projects. Artistic quality at TuckUnder is based upon artist’s tactical aesthetics, participatory exchange, home economics, and conceptual fortitude rather than traditionally conservative art fair and gallery criteria.
For its first season of interior and exterior art exhibit programming, TuckUnder plans six platform exhibits that engage the local community with under recognized local and regional emerging artists and curators working in visual arts, video, site-specific sculpture and installation from May thru November 2012. Artists will collaborate with the unique 1950’s architectural environs, TuckUnder garage, fake butterflies and woodpecker, raspberry patch, and scenic overlook. Recent and forthcoming exhibition and curatorial projects include the artists Karen Kasel, Scott Stulen, Jehra Patrick, Lisa Bergh & Andrew Nordin/Rural Aesthetic Initiative, Pamela & Frank Gaard, Anne George, and Raspberry Patch Resident Sarah Wolbert.
TuckUnder Projects is created with the generous help of MRAC, Springboard for the Arts Incubator program, Arvesen Co., Driessen Water, Mayan Co., Northern Sun, Printz, and many individuals. TuckUnder Projects activity is funded, in part, by a Metropolitan Regional Arts Council Community Arts Grant, and by appropriations from the Minnesota State Legislature with money from the State's general fund, and its arts and cultural heritage fund that was created by a vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008.
Please join and donate to our TuckUnder Projects Raspberry Patch Diagnosis Kickstarter Campaign at:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/raspberrydiagnosis/tuckunder-projects-raspberry-patch-diagnosis
Image: Desire-Detail/Karen Kasel © 2012/Graphite, oil pastel, color pencil on paper/15x22 Inches. For further information please contact Pete Driessen at 612-719-7377 or info@tuckunder.org, or visit Karen Kasel website: http://www.mnartists.org/Karen_Kasel.
