PRESS RELEASE
Sokyo Gallery, and Sokyo Annex (Kyoto) are pleased to present “Kristen Morgin: 21st Century Works 2001- 2019.”
Following her successful solo exhibition at SOKYO ATSUMI in Tokyo in this spring, Kristen Morgin's works will now be on display in Kyoto in her first solo exhibition here, featuring early works from 2001 to recent works from 2019. This exhibition offers a more in-depth glimpse into her explorations over the years.
Based in Los Angeles, Morgin uses unfired clay to create works that represent objects and iconsthat evoke personal or collective memories, such as picture books, toys, Donald Duck, Yoda, and Brad Pitt. Using paint, ink, graphite, and markers on clay to create weathered, worn, and tattered surfaces, she invites the viewer's nostalgia.
My works are delicate things that express the preciousness, nobility and stubborn-headedness of matter that resists its own inevitable demise in spite of its dilapidated condition and predestined downfall.
-Kristen Morgin
In several works, clay objects that look like plywood or cardboard scraps are positioned next to actual cardboard or plywood counterparts, further confusing what is real and what is fabricated. The effect of Morgin's eye-fooling craftsmanship is to increase our sensitivity to the physical world around us and to perhaps change one's perceptions of the things in the world. Influenced by Francisco Goya, Philip Guston, Vincent van Gogh and others, Morgin also inserts direct expressions of American political and social issues into her work.