Past Residents
Keren Benbenisty
Conflict, as a theme, pervades much of Keren Benbenisty’s artistic practice. Suggesting contradiction, paradox and ambiguity, her work invests the conceptual with what appears to be its antithesis – romanticism. By investigating the emotional depths of the individual and its relation to language, Benbenisty’s work brings to mind the tension between the two. Coming from a current western context, there is a significant correspondence with Benbenisty’s oriental Middle Eastern origins. Using drawing, video, and installation, she aims to create “contemporary relics” that straddle diverse cultures and temporal perceptions. Benbenisty transforms objects, images, ready-mades, ephemeral materials and texts from the everyday, the banal, the ordinary, moving towards the unique, the individual.
Keren Benbenisty (born 1977, Herzeliya, Israel) moved to Paris in 1998 and graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieur des Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2004. She attended California Institute of the Arts in 2003 and Skowhegan School of Art, Maine, in 2009. Her work has been shown in different venues and art fairs around Europe.
Events & Exhibitions
Keren Benbenisty: Saxa loquuntur stones speak
December 17, 2014–February 15, 2015
Keren Benbenisty, One revolution per minute, 2011, Kinetic installation, Dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist.
Keren Benbenisty, Headlines, Ongoing project, 23 × 4 in. (58.42 × 10.16 cm). Courtesy of the artist.
Keren Benbenisty, More than You see less, than you feel, 2011, Drawing, ink on paper, 81/4 × 113/4 in. (20.95 × 29.84 cm). Courtesy of the artist.
Keren Benbenisty, Times New, 2008, Sculpture, stainless steel, 55 × 60 in. (139.7 × 152.4 cm). Courtesy of the artist.
Keren Benbenisty, Two Suns in the Sunset, 2011, Kinetic Installation, 77 × 51 in. (195.58 × 129.54 cm). Courtesy of the artist.
Residents from Israel
Past Resident2012: American-Scandinavian Foundation
Øystein Aasan
Øystein Aasan’s practice uses architecture, books, collage, sculpture and painting to address memory, the function of images and the place of the viewer. Aasan’s works function as a game of visual contrast and compare. The modernist grid is taken on a play date with images from the leftovers of a visual history associated with popular culture. Aasan picks these images from old magazines or images that are mass-produced and potentially limitless in quantity. As such they are examples of the norm in art post-pop. Both through references and the use of found imagery, post-modernist art keeps seeping through the cracks of the modernist grid. Or perhaps rather the grid is being superimposed over the found image. This could easily be interpreted as an attempt to re-describe the assumed literary, qualities of referentiality that we normally ascribe to post-modern art. The result is a feeling of visual tension that is optically immediate, but also conceptually striking since what is at stake is the very distinction between modernist and post-modernist ways of understanding the image. Aasan’s work makes the connection between grid and multiple obvious by combining them in objects that themselves appear anonymously unique. (Text by Erlend Hammer)
Øystein Aasan (born 1977, Kristiansand, Norway) received his education from the National Collage of Art and Design, Oslo. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo; Lautom, Oslo; Stenersen Museum, Oslo; Sørlandets Art Museum, Kristiansand; PSM, Berlin; Momentum Biennale, Moss, Norway; Migros Museum, Zürich; Kunstverein Arnsberg, Arnsberg, Germany; and La Vitrine, Paris. He has published texts and essays in several international magazines. Aasan lives and works in Berlin.
Øystein Aasan, Never Ending Memory, 2006, Sculpture/Archive, Dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist.
Øystein Aasan, Solo Show, 2011, Installation. Courtesy of the artist and PSM Gallery, Berlin.
Øystein Aasan, Solo Show, 2011. Courtesy of the artist and PSM Gallery, Berlin.
Øystein Aasan, Double Trouble, 2009. Courtesy of the artist and La Vitrine, Paris.
Øystein Aasan, Spot On, 2011. Courtesy of the artist, Sørlandets Kunst Museum, Norway.
Past Resident2012: Canada Council for the Arts
Kelly Lycan
Kelly Lycan’s practice investigates how objects are placed and displayed in the world and the cycle of value through which they move. Her tendency is to reinterpret and reassemble a variety of high and low objects and strategies, blurring the distinction between content and style, production and mass-consumption, originals and copies, readymade and made work. Both photography and collecting may be seen as acts of acquisition and/or preservation; a key interest for Lycan is to not only to address the medium of photography, but also to create a shifting identity between sculpture, painting/drawing and photography. These ideas create hybrids of vernacular collections, art history, contemporary art and design; often paradigms collide, revealing similarities, influences and failures.
Kelly Lycan is an installation and photo-based artist residing in Vancouver, Canada. She received her BFA from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and her MFA from the University of California, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, most recently at a solo show at Or Gallery, Vancouver, Canada. She is also a member of Instant Coffee, a service-oriented artist collective that has exhibited in Canada, South America, Europe and the USA.
Kelly Lycan, Bronze Tinfoil Ball, 2011, Bronze, aluminum foil and painted walls, 8 in. diameter. Courtesy of the artist and Or Gallery, Vancouver, Canada.
Kelly Lycan, Last Resort, 2011, Plastic, 132 × 264 × 96 in. (335.28 × 670.56 × 243.84 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Centre A, Vancouver.
Kelly Lycan, White Hot A Flea Market, 2009. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery TPW, Toronto.
Kelly Lycan, Last Supper, 2009, Color print and plastic table, 43 × 32 in. (109.22 × 81.28 cm). Courtesy of the artist.
Kelly Lycan, White Hot A Flea Market, 2009. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery TPW, Toronto.
