Jun 27th 2019

Kandis Friesen: All is well, that has not ended

@ Wedge Projects

1448 W Howard St, Chicago, Il, 60626

Opening Thursday, June 27th, from 5PM - 8PM

On view through Saturday, July 13th

Opening Reception: 5-8 pm, Thursday, June 27, 2019
Residency Dates: June 5 – July 13, 2019

All is well, that has not ended is a new body of work from interdisciplinary artist Kandis Friesen. Working through various modes of citation, the exhibition takes form in sculpture, writing, and print, calling on archival nodes and modes of transposition.

This constellation of works deals in reconstructions and recitations, a kind of chorus in the round. Collaged and cast from mediated sites – from memory, a photo, a text – the works shift time and scale, inhabiting a present future-past: a repeated banner for a gathering for nothing; a repositioned landscape from a work camp postcard; a remake of an architectural plaster relief in a new context and form. Through the connected histories of constructivism, soviet conceptualism, folk arts and visual cultures, Friesen cross-fades family narratives, practices, and her oral cultural language to write new histories in archival assemblage – a dispersed literature in object and text.

The exhibition will include a new artist publication, free for distribution in a limited edition of 75.

Artist Bio
Kandis Friesen’s work is anchored in diasporic language, dispersed translations, and disintegrating archival forms. Drawing on Russian Mennonite, Ukrainian, and former Soviet geographies, her interdisciplinary compositions build from architectural, material, and spectral inhabitations of exile, amplifying minute and myriad histories at once.

Her work has been presented internationally at festivals and galleries including LUX (London, UK), Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago, US), FIFA (Montréal, CA), Eastern Edge (St. John’s, CA), Images Festival (Toronto, CA), Traverse Vidéo (Toulouse, FR), MIX (NYC, US), Athens Digital Arts Festival (Athens, GR), and Jihlava International Film Festival (Jihlava, CZ). Friesen is a recipient of the 2019 Brucebo Art Foundation Research Grant, the 2018 Jury Prize for Best Canadian Work at WNDX, and project grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the CALQ. Friesen holds a BFA in Intermedia Arts from Concordia University (Montréal, CA), an MFA in Art Theory & Practice from Northwestern University (Evanston, US), and was recently in residence at the Santa Fe Art Institute (Santa Fe, US) and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (Omaha, US). She lives and works in Chicago, and her videos are distributed by Groupe Intervention Vidéo in Montréal.

Official Website

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