WILDING CRAN GALLERY

Proximity

June 12th - July 31st

Artist Biographies

Marwa Abdul-Rahman, Vikky Alexander, Yevgeniya Baras, Louis Cameron, Justin Chance, Chris Cran, Todd Gray, Elliott Hundley, February James, Heather McGill, Jason McLean, Paul Pescador, Lindsay Preston Zappas, Jenny Rask, Paul Salveson, Fran Siegel, Evan Whale and John Zane Zappas

Marwa Abdul-Rahman (b. 1974) received her BA from Yale University and her MFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA. She lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.

Abdul-Rahman is a mixed media artist whose work focuses on ideas of perception, definition, boundaries, and fluidity. She is interested in the conversation between contrasting themes, and the belief that opposites connote a type of freedom through the act of boundaryless transformation. Her work aims to blur the distinction between positive and negative space, and challenges the viewer to find an awareness of art as a construction. This in turn extends to an awareness of one's surroundings, and varied perspectives that confront and challenge previously held ideas of truth. Ultimately, the re-examination of widely held ideas reflects the anxiety of our times, and opens up thought, especially in regards to meaning and interpretation.

Vikky Alexander (b. 1959, Victoria, , Canada) is a critically acclaimed international artist. A leading figure in the field of photo-conceptualism, Alexander works with photography, sculpture and installation. Her art is at once both seductive and disruptive: she likes to situate the viewer with idealized spaces that reflect our aspirations and utopian desires. She has received numerous awards, most recently a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship. In 2019 she had a solo survey exhibition ‘Extreme Beauty’ at the Art Gallery, curated by Daina Augaitis, accompanied by a 160 page catalogue.

Alexander’s work has been exhibited at venues including The Whitney Museum of American Art, DIA Art Foundation, White Columns, The and the International Center of Photography in New York, Kunsthalle Bern, Bern, Canada House, London, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Musée d’art Contemporain, Montreal and National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

Her works are included in the permanent collections of the International Center of Photography, Musée d’art Moderne et Contemporain, Geneva, Museum of Contemporary Art,

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Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, and the National Gallery of Canada, among numerous others. Upcoming presentations of her work include exhibitions at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Sprengel Museum, Hannover, Museum der Moderne, Salzburg and Museo d’arte della Svizzera italiana, Lugano. After 25 years in Vancouver, teaching photography at the University of Victoria, she recently moved to Montreal. She is represented by Cooper Cole, Toronto, Downs & Ross, New York, Trépanier Baer, Calgary and Wilding Cran, Los Angeles.

Yevgenia Baras is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Yevgeniya has a BA and MS from the University of Pennsylvania (2003) and an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2007). Yevgeniya’s work has been exhibited at numerous galleries in New York including: Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, Kinz + Tillou Fine Art, Zurcher studio, Asya Geisberg Gallery, Allegra LaViola Gallery. She has also shown at Susanne Hilberry Gallery in Detroit, MI; Barbur Gallery in Jerusalem; Barbara Walters Gallery at Sarah Lawrence College; Real Art Ways Gallery in Hartford, CT.

Louis Cameron was born in Columbus, Ohio, USA; lives and works in Berlin, Germany. He earned a B.F.A. from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and an M.F.A. from Tyler School of Art, Temple University in Philadelphia.

Cameron works in painting and photography. His paintings are collages on canvas with patterned compositions. His diverse photography practice encompasses the creation of portraits and abstractions that engage the traditions Surrealism and Dada.

Cameron has had solo exhibitions and projects at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; The Kitchen, New York; The Armory Show, New York; and the Saint Louis Art Museum. He has also participated in group exhibitions in the United States and abroad at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; the Contemporary Art Museum Houston; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, United Kingdom; Paris Photo, France; and the Dakar Biennial, Senegal. Cameron has participated in the Artist-in-Residence program at The Studio Museum in Harlem and been a Fellow in Painting with the New York Foundation for the Arts. His work is in the collections of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; the International Center of Photography, New York; JPMorgan Chase Art Collection, New York; and the Saint Louis Art Museum.

Justin Chance (b.1993, New York, NY) is an artist, writer and co-founder of The Collaborative Center for Storm Space and Seismic Research, raised in Valley Stream, NY. He holds a Bachelors in Visual & Critical Studies and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He had a solo exhibition at Smart Objects, Los Angeles, CA. His work has also been included in group exhibitions at Fonda, Leipzig, Germany; Housing, Miami, FL; Underground Flower at James River Park, Richmond, VA; Three Four Three Four, Brooklyn, NY; Gern en Regalia, New York, NY; Shoot the Lobster, New York, NY; Thierry Goldberg Gallery, New York, NY; Lock Up International, London, United Kingdom; Baba Yaga

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Gallery, at Grand Buffet & Pulvers Glass, Hudson, NY; Institute of Contemporary Art Baltimore, Baltimore, MD; Smart Objects, Los Angeles, CA; and May 2000, Chicago, IL.

Chris Cran (b.1949 Ocean Falls, B.C.) Canadian artist, described in The New York Times as a painter who has built a career on tampering with people’s perceptions. Widely exhibited across Canada and internationally recognised, Cran has become known for turning nothing into something, with the slightest push. Cran’s paintings, included in numerous Canadian collections, have to do with visual tricks, images that appear one way but have been made another way.

In addition to his professional activities as a painter and teacher (ACAD), Cran has been actively involved with Calgary’s internationally recognised One Yellow Rabbit Performance Theatre. Cran's work has been reviewed by The New York Times, Canadian Art Magazine, and The Globe and Mail among many others. Cran’s work may be found in numerous private and public collections including the National Gallery of Canada, the Glenbow Museum , the Nickle Arts Museum, and the Art Gallery of Alberta. Chris Cran is represented by TrépanierBaer Gallery in Calgary, Clint Roenisch Gallery in Toronto, and Wilding Cran Gallery in Los Angeles.

Todd Gray Born in Los Angeles, received both his BFA and MFA from California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). Solo and group exhibitions include the Studio Museum, Harlem, NY; Whitney Biennial, NY; Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont; USC Fisher Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Renaissance Society, University of Chicago; David Lewis, NY; Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco; National Portrait Gallery, London; Grand Palais, Paris among others. Performance works have been presented at institutions such as the Roy & Edna Disney Cal/Arts Theater, REDCAT; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. His work is represented in numerous museum collections: Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; National Gallery of Canada; Studio Museum in Harlem; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles among others. He was the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019, and of a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residency, Italy in 2016. Todd Gray’s photo based work explores issues of black masculinity, diaspora, and contemporary/historical examinations of power. Gray has presented this work in academic conferences at Yale and Harvard University. Gray works between Los Angeles and Ghana, where he explores the diasporic dislocations and cultural connections which link Western hegemony with West Africa.

Elliott Hundley’s dynamic sculptures, collages, and paintings employ cut photographs, natural objects, urban detritus, paint, stick pins, and countless other materials, giving them an ephemeral, ad hoc effect in a gallery space. Often Hundley’s work features dramatic narrative arcs found in classic epic poetry and plays, contrasting the fragility of the materials with a loose plot line that the viewer can follow. Hundley’s work has a large art historical pedigree, ranging from the early combine sculptures of Robert Rauschenberg to the provisional minimalism of Richard Tuttle to the elaborate narrative impulses of many contemporary artists.

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February James is a mixed media artist originally from Washington DC. She works primarily in oil pastels with a penchant for watercolor and graphite powder. She often emploies bold colors and emotive tableau with empirical evidence. Her work holds an autobiographical narrative, her paintings represent her own experiences and familial relationships. She asks the question, how much does the legacy of a family influence our everyday life, our vulnerabilities, our expectations, and explores the hidden emotions that exist between what we see and what we experience.

Heather McGill lived in the Detroit suburbs for over two decades, where she headed the Sculpture Department at Cranbrook Academy of Art. The city’s industrial heritage, specifically the automotive industry and Ford’s philosophy of mass production continues to influence her artistic practice. She learned to paint at a custom auto body shop while living in Michigan and continues to apply pigment using this method. A native to the west coast, her work is infused with the regional influence of southern California’s surf and custom car culture.

She was awarded the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award in 1999 and a Kresge Artist Fellowship in 2011. McGill has received grants for both permanent and temporary installations from the National Endowment for the Arts, Ford Foundation, California Arts Council and San Francisco Arts Council. Her work is included in many private and public collections including the U.S Embassy in Helsinki, Finland, Sprint, Albright-Knox Gallery, Fidelity, the Progressive Art Collection, Wellington Management, Compuware Corporation, the Hood Art Museum, The Exploratorium Science Museum and the Detroit Institute of the Arts. She lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Jason Mclean (b. 1971, London, ON ). Brooklyn based Canadian artist, creates autobiographical imagery, through scavenged objects, and memory mapping. Jason McLean’s diverse art practice includes sculpture, sound works, zines, book works, mixed-media installations, correspondence art, curatorial explorations, puppets, and performance, but he is probably best known for his diaristic mapping and surreal drawings. Inspirations fuelling his daily observations are relationships with local and visited environments. His works are often described as mental maps, where samplings of his daily observations are mashed-up into antiheroic, yet poignant combinations. Grounded in family life as Husband and Father, McLean works by using humour to touch upon challenging subject matter, such as sadness, loss, displacement, and economic hardship.

After attending H.B. Beal Secondary School, McLean graduated from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Vancouver in 1997. He has exhibited nationally and internationally including shows at The National Gallery of Canada, The , Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa in Venice, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Loyal Gallery in Malmo Sweden, Richard Heller Gallery in Santa Monica, Franklin Parrish Gallery and Zieher Smith Gallery in New York City. He has work in major collections throughout North America including the Museum of Modern Art, Vancouver Art Gallery, Bank of Montreal Collection and the Royal Bank of Canada. McLean is represented by Michael Gibson Gallery in London, Canada and Wilding Cran Gallery in Los Angeles, CA.

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Paul Pescador (b. 1983) is a contemporary trans-nonbinary artist who works in film, photography, and performance. They graduated with an MFA from University of California, Irvine and a BA from University of Southern California. Select exhibitions and screenings include: UV Estudios, Buenos Aires; Biquini Wax, Mexico City, LADRÓNgalería, Mexico City; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Main Museum, Los Angeles, The Pit, Glendale; 18th Street Art Center, Santa Monica; 5 Car Garage, Santa Monica; gallery1993, Los Angeles; Coastal/Borders, Getty Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA at Angels Gate Cultural Center; LAND at The Gamble House, Pasadena; Marathon Screenings, Los Angeles; Vacancy, Los Angeles; Ashes/Ashes, Los Angeles; Park View, Los Angeles; and Human Resources, Los Angeles.

Select performances include: Machine Projects, Los Angeles; Los Angeles Contemporary Archives; Performa 2015; Colony, New York; UC Berkeley: Durham Studio Theater; PAM, Los Angeles; Hammer Museum, with KCHUNG TV, Los Angeles; REDCAT, Los Angeles; Guggenheim Gallery at Chapman University, Los Angeles; and ForYourArt, Los Angeles. Their first collection of writing, CRUSHES: A NOVELLA, was published by Econo Textual Objects in Spring 2017.

Lindsay Preston Zappas is an L.A.-based artist, writer, and the founder and editor- in-chief of Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles (Carla), a quarterly print publication, online art journal, and podcast which launched in 2015. She received her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2013. She has had solo exhibitions at the Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art (Buffalo, NY), Ochi Projects (Los Angeles, CA), and City Limits (Oakland, CA), Vacancy (Los Angeles, CA), and Machine Projects (Los Angeles, CA). Group exhibitions include Cranbrook Academy of Art (Bloomfield Hills, MI) Five Car Garage (Los Angeles, CA), NowSpace (Los Angeles, CA), Klowden Mann (Los Angeles, CA), The Front (New Orleans, LA), Small Editions (Brooklyn, NY), and the Canton Museum of Art (Canton, OH).

Her writing has appeared in ArtReview, Flash Art, SFAQ, Artsy, LACanvas, and Art21. Zappas is the host of The Carla Podcast, and is an arts correspondent for KCRW where she contributes regular on-air segments and produces a weekly arts newsletter called Art Insider. She has been a visiting writing mentor to Burnaway’s Art Writing Incubator program, Los Angeles Review of Book’s Publishing Workshop, the Cornelia publishing workshop, the Oklahoma Arts Writing and Curatorial Fellowship. She has been a visiting artist/critic to University of California Los Angeles, CalArts, ArtCenter, University of California Santa Barbara, Cal State Long Beach, Los Angeles Valley College, University of Southern California, Syracuse University, Colorado State University, Point Loma Nazarene University, and others. She has taught at Cal State Long Beach, Oregon College of Art & Craft, Fullerton College, and California State University, Northridge.

Jenny Rask is a Lebanese-American multidisciplinary artist originally from Portland, Oregon. She emerged as a self-taught graphic designer after receiving a BA in Journalism from the University of Oregon. After winning a design award at 21, she moved to New York City and worked for MTV as an accomplished motion graphics designer for many years. NYC life and

1700 S. Santa Fe Ave, Unit 460, Los Angeles CA 90021 www.wildingcran.com [email protected] 213 553 9190 WILDING CRAN GALLERY street fashion informed her daily design work and strengthened her critical eye and perception of color. Trash piles on city sidewalks generated a deep fascination in the subtle beauty of found objects and their forms. After moving to Los Angeles and while raising 3 kids, the charm of the mundane emerged again in her domestic life. Re-examining how art applies to her current life, she began to photo document laundry masses and create object arrangements inside and gradually outside her home and expand her art practice from soft sculpture to installation work influenced by “Low- Cost Design” in urban and natural landscapes. Her use of photography influences her scavenging process. She frames her discoveries in camera, and then uses her images as a bridge to making sculpture. She takes inventory of accumulations as they relate to the formal qualities of her sculpture. Using Instagram (@laundrytwentyfourseven and @hungrytrucks) she compiles images of these discoveries as an attempt to re-contextualize the rejected and disposed. The materials transcend themselves; objects replete with a sense of loathing and obsolescence transform into things of beauty or desire, or somewhere in-between.

In 2020 she received her MFA in Sculpture at CSULB.

Paul Salveson (b. 1984, Washington, D.C.) received his BA from Bard College and his MFA from the University of Southern California. Salveson has presented projects at AWHRHWAR, Los Angeles (2017); JOAN, Los Angeles (2015); Favorite Goods, Los Angeles (2015); Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2014); and Human Resources, Los Angeles (2013). Past group exhibitions include The Props Assist the House, Bel Ami, Los Angeles (2019); Things Themselves, Vernon Gardens, Vernon (2016); Chewing the Scenery, Icebox Project Space, Philadelphia (2016); First Book Award Showcase, Media Space, Science Museum, London (2015); Louie, Louie, Human Resources, Los Angeles (2014); Three Themes: Contemporary Connections With Paul Strand, Philadelphia Photo Arts Center (2014); Itinerant Belongings, Slought & University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (2014); Reading Photographs, Centre for Modern and Contemporary Art, La Spezia (2013); Photography For The Next Generation, Swiss Institute, New York (2009); Newest New York, Prague Biennale 4, Karlin Hall, Prague (2009); Altered, Stitched, and Gathered, MOMA PS1, New York (2006). A book of his photography, Between the Shell was published by Mack Books in 2013.

Fran Siegel’s investigation of place occurs through the activity of drawing. Sprawling collaged and woven constructions are depictions of time, movement, and cultural impact. Siegel’s monumental spatial drawings have recently been acquired by LACMA, The Museum of

Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Long Beach Museum of Art, and the Yale University Art Gallery.Her work is represented by Wilding/ Cran Gallery in Los Angeles and has been presented in solo exhibitions at Lesley Heller Gallery in New York. Published articles include The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Art in America, ArtCritical, ARTnews, Artillery, Art+Cake, Art on Paper, The Brooklyn Rail, LA Weekly, Fabrik, Hyperallergic, Sculpture Magazine, and included in "Los Angeles Studio Coversations," a global book series.Siegel's Fulbright award to Brazil supported her research for "Lineage Through

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Landscape" a solo exhibition at The UCLA Fowler Museum that was included in the Getty's city-wide initiative “PST- LA/LA” in 2017. Siegel’s solo drawing project “Translocation and Overlay” at The Art, Design and Architecture Museum at UC Santa Barbara 2013/14 and 2020 was a study of local ecology. This major work was purchased by the museum and was the subject of a feature article in X-TRA Contemporary Art Quarterly.

International exhibitions and fellowships inform her practice and include The Bogliasco Foundation, Nuova Icona, and Siena Art Institute in Italy; La Napôule and Camargo/Bau Foundation in France; Muzeum Stzuki, Lodz, Poland; CCA Andrax, Spain; The Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv; and Instituto Sacatar, Bahia, Brazil. Siegel represented the United States in the IX International Biennial of Cuenca, Ecuador and U.S. Art in Embassies commissioned a permanent work for the consulate in Guayaquil, Ecuador. In 2021 Siegel completed a commission for a community center lobby in Los Angeles and is currently commissioned by the Los Angeles Metro Rail to create a large scale site-specific work will be permanently installed at the La Brea Wilshire station, slated to open in 2023.Siegel received a Getty Grant from the California Community Foundation, a C.O.L.A Los Angeles Individual Artist Fellowship, and the OC Contemporary Collectors Grant. She earned her M.F.A. from Yale University School of Art, and B.F.A. from Tyler School of Art. She is currently a professor in the School of Art at California State University, Long Beach.

Evan Whale is a LA based artist working in experimental project-based photography. Whale earned his BA in Photography from Bard College in 2009, and a MFA in Photography from the Yale School of Art in 2014. Whale’s most recent group exhibitions were at The Bridge House (LA); Regen Projects (LA); the FLAG Art Foundation (NY), and Diane Rosenstein Gallery (LA), and he has exhibited internationally at Galerie Thaddeus Ropac, both in Salzburg, Austria, and Paris Pantin, France. Whale’s last solo (/two person) show was at LY Gallery in Los Angeles in 2019.

John Zappas (b, 1985, Torrance, CA) makes drawings and sculptures. Whether rendered in oil stick, wax crayon, charcoal, or graphite, the calligraphic black lines in his drawings serve as a lyrical record of a performative bodily impulse. Zappas’ sculptural explorations in salvaged wood are both aesthetic and functional, and through a curvilinear visual language of growth, the ashtrays, stools and back massagers invite a physical connection with the viewer. Zappas received his MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2012 and has attended residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art and California Botanical Garden. Recent group exhibitions include: LA Louver, Casa Perfect, The Brand Library, Ochi Gallery, NADA Miami, and The Landing. The artist lives and works in Los Angeles.

1700 S. Santa Fe Ave, Unit 460, Los Angeles CA 90021 www.wildingcran.com [email protected] 213 553 9190