3 Way Calling

Exhibition: August 30, 2008 through September 21
Opening Artist Reception: at 6:00 p.m. on August 30, 2008

"3 Way Calling" is an exhibition featuring three artists from three culturally and historically distinctive countries, Aleksandra Janik from Poland, Taro Hattori from Japan and Michael Damm from the U.S.A. "3 Way Calling" explores the subjective experiences of mobility and relocation in the globalized world. Three artists gathered to explore the shift of perspective and gaps in cultural perceptions that occur so frequently in our increasingly multi-centered world. The mechanism for their inquiry is a kind of triangular rotation - each artist moves one step over to make work in (and, to some extent, for and about) home countries of one of the other artists; Aleksandra Janik addresses Japan, Taro Hattori addresses US, and Michael Damm addresses Poland.

Aleksandra Janik's installation and black and white photographs are derived from her experience in Japanese culture, expressing tactility and tranquility of Zen gardens. Taro Hattori creates a room size installation with sound and a cardboard sculpture of the Enola Gay, the airplane which dropped an A-bomb at the end of WWII. Michael Damm presents photographic and video collages which document the city-scape of Katowice, layering space and history to construct suggestively poetic images.

Aleksandra Janik

Trans-locals

"In the temporal order, a stroll is just a temporary exit outside, a transient contact with the world, a detachment from one's own stopping place and from oneself [...] The subject of a walk is constantly aware of his/her substantiality and individuality, but also anonymity, as he/she is not able to anticipate everything that he/she encounters. [...] A stroll individualizes, but in a way it also de-individualizes, liberates from itself, as if motion could liberate one from trouble, problems and worries. A stroll allows one to gulp a lungful of the world and maybe even a lungful of existence. Detaching oneself from the everyday point of existence, one detaches oneself from oneself – as a point. One disperses in the environment and simultaneously becomes soaked with the vastness of the outdoors. A stroll ends with a return, though." (A stroll as a philosophical activity, Stefan Symotiuk)

The project refers (as artistic commentary) to questions of how geographic relocations influence artists: whether it helps artists to go beyond the fixed categories of their own identity (e.g. physical, psychical, social or cultural profiles) or their limitations which are defined through their relations with everything outside. A reflection on the impossibility of entering someone else's world -an alien culture which may seem hermetic because, for example, of the illegibility of the alphabet, the unfamiliarity with the people and their problems or a different perception of everything around- irrefutably accompanies the project. Is it intuition and conjecture, that is premonitions and never a certainty of the world, that prevail in the materialized pictures?

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ALEKSANDRA JANIK

EXHIBITIONS:

2008 3-Way Calling, Gallery of Contemporary Art, Opole, Poland
  The 15th German International Exhibition of Graphic Art, Frechen, Germany (Jury prize)
  The 7th Kochi International Triennial Exhibition of Prints, Japan
  Kon.texty, Gallery of Contemporary Art, Opole, Poland
2007 The 14th Tallinn Print Triennial, Estonia (Jury Prize)
  The 14th Mino-Washi Akari-art Exhibition, Mino, Japan (Hibino Prize)
  Art: la Pologne se dévoile, Arras, France
  International Photography Awards, Los Angeles, USA (Honorable mention)
2006 Fresh, Artist's Annual Exhibition, Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, USA
  Grid06 International Photo Biennale, Amsterdam, Holland (Nomination for the Holland Casino Grid Award)
  Grand Prix Young Polish Print, Kraków, Poland
  Autumn Salon'06, Gallery of Contemporary Art, Opole, Poland (Grand Prix)
2005 Negative Being, Gallery of Contemporary Art, Wroclaw, Poland
2003 Kuenstlerische Positionen Opole–Potsdam, Haus im Gueldenen Arm, Potsdam, Germany
2001 Poolse Grafiek, Kunst-Ahoy, Rotterdam, Holland
2000 Women of the World, White Columns Gallery, New York, USA
1998 The Polish Book Art, Central Library, the Hague, Netherlands; Polish Institute in Berlin, Germany
  The 4th Sapporo International Print Biennale, Japan (Sponsors' Prize)
1997 Polish Graphic Arts, Museum Junge Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany
1995 The International Independent Exhibition of Prints, Kanagawa, Japan

EDUCATION:

2008 Habilitation, Faculty of Graphic Arts, Academy of Fine Arts in Wroclaw, Poland
2005 Ph.D., Faculty of Graphic Arts, Academy of Fine Arts in Wroclaw, Poland
1996
   -97
Braunschweig University of Art, Germany (DAAD grant holder)
1996 M.F.A., Faculty of Graphic Arts, Academy of Fine Arts in Wroclaw, Poland
Taro Hattori

...till that morning

"...till that morning" is a room installation with an airplane sculpture, yellow tinted windows and the sound of cicadas. The airplane is a structural replica of B-29A Superfortress "Enola Gay" which dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Title was derived from the lyrics of a standard song "Summertime" by George Gershwin. One line goes "... But till that morning, there's a'nothing can harm you ..."

This piece was presented in Poland soon after Missile Defense Contract was signed between the U.S. and Poland, Summer 2008. Using filtered light and structural/abstract airplane, I wanted it to represent how a historical tragic event would emerge as the sense of crisis reflecting a current political event.

3 way (mis)communication

As I have this exhibition in Opole, Poland, it seems really easy to encounter the "Other" in this globalized world where we fly all over the places and communicate with people. But, it is actually very difficult to have a sense of the established "Other," the second person and the third person, when various kinds of border-lines are blurred and our physicality easily gets elusive because of our mobility and virtuality of technology. In this sense, 3-way Calling is still my fantasy. The third person does exist only when the second exists. The third person emerges only through the process of establishing the second person. On the other hand, without having the sense of the third person, the second person can never be established. It is impossible to know what 2 means without knowing what 3 is. In this opportunity, I explore my second person, the US, in relation to my first person, Japan. And, it is very important to show this piece in my third person, Poland. Through this process, I hope Poland, my third, bear the possibility to become my second person anytime soon.

polish translation

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TARO HATTORI

EXHIBITIONS:

2008 3 way calling Galeria Sztuki Wspólczesnej, Poland
The Great White Good Children Gallery, New Orleans, LA
NEXT, Merchandise Mart, Chicago, IL. with Swarm Gallery, invitational project-based exhibition
Artists’ Choices LMAN Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2007 The Little Show Swarm Gallery, Oakland, CA
Apoptosis Space 47, San Jose, CA
Cultivating Creativity Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA
Fabric of Identity Western Gallery, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA
Anarchist Book Fair Judson Memorial, New York, NY
2006 Some Assembly Required The LAB, San Francisco, CA
Future Tense Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, CA
Artists’ Diary: The Chapter of Spring Light Taipei Artist Village, Taipei, Taiwan
2005 Beaut Brute Rocket World Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2005 Open House Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Woodside, CA
2004 Happy Pack Mission 17, San Francisco, CA
Close Calls: 2004 Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA
2003 Missing | Persons Pro Arts Gallery, Oakland, CA
2002 Paradise in Search of a Future The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta, GA
2001 Paradise in Search of a Future CEPA Gallery, Buffalo, NY
The impossible Ssamzie Space, Seoul, South Korea
IMMOBILITY Peter Miller Gallery, Chicago, IL

EDUCATION:

2000 Master of Fine Arts in Time Arts/Video, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL
1994 Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan

complete c.v.

Michael Damm

of its elusive body

For me, who has been living here in Katowice all my life, this one photo taken by a foreigner somehow managed to capture my own thoughts about Katowice. The train station may be concrete and dirty but in it there is also this longing - to leave this place or maybe keep coming back.To people who pass through on the freeways and transit lines that bisect the neighborhood, it’s a corridor zone - the interior margin of Bay Area sprawl. They see it out the windows of cars and commuter trains, and in a sense, don’t see it at all. I’m interested in the transitory glimpses you catch while moving through – as peripheral vision brushes across the city’s overlooked spaces, and subtly reshapes knowledge. I was interested in Katowice partly because it had this huge negative imaginary attached to it – “Black Silesia” - and I saw it differently. The woods you see flying in, surrounding dense clusters of apartment blocks; the ubiquitous desire lines - small footpaths that cut through open spaces and mark countless daily passages; even the acrid residue of burning coal in the air, and the fact that coal was mined from under the city and buildings began to sink and crack. It fed an idea of an intensely corporeal place. We take in the scene from midair. The city looks like a single gigantic creature. countless arteries stretch to the ends of its elusive body.

Jola Konowalczyk Michael Damm Haruki Murakami

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MICHAEL DAMM

EXHIBITIONS:

2009 “Suddenly”, Pomona College Museum, Claremont, CA (upcoming)
2008 “Corridor”, David Cunningham Projects, San Francisco, CA (upcoming)
“last house on the left (leaving Oakland)”, Invisible Venue, Oakland, CA (upcoming)
“Suddenly”, Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, Portland, OR
“3-way Calling”, Galeria Sztuki Wspolczesnej, Opole, Poland
“Amidst the Ruins”, Mission 17, San Francisco, CA
2007 “ultra deepfield”, Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, CA
2006 “The Infrastructural Image”, Belkin Satellite Gallery, Vancouver, Canada
2005 “Video in the Built Environment”
   BBC Big Screen, Exchange Square, Manchester, England
   BBC Big Screen, Clayton Square, Liverpool, England
   Columbia College, Chicago, IL
“Remote Satellite”, Remote Satellite, Oakland, CA
“Hands On the Hands-Off”, SF Cinematheque, San Francisco, CA
2004 “atoms”, Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2003 “Elsewhere”, 21 Grand, Oakland, CA
2002 “brilliant pebbles”, Plus Kunst, Dusseldorf, Germany
“Sight Unseen”, Walter McBean Gallery, SFAI, San Francisco, CA
“Drawings”, Art League of Manatee County, Bradenton, FL
2001 “Pop Soup”, Ego Park, Oakland, CA
2000 “Simili”, DeChiara/Stewart Gallery, New York, NY
“model cities”, Clifford-Smith Gallery, Boston, MA
“Pierogi Flat File”, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA

CATALOGS AND PUBLICATIONS:

2008 3-Way Calling, exhibition catalog, Galeria Sztuki Wspolczesnej, Opole, Poland
2002 Sight Unseen, exhibition catalog, Walter McBean Gallery, SFAI

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS:

1997-2003 Curatorial Committee, The LAB, San Francisco, CA
  1. Advisory Committee, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA
  2. Founder/Director, Victoria Room, San Francisco, CA

EDUCATION:

2004 Mills College, MFA, Oakland, CA
1991 San Francisco State University, BA, San Francisco, CA
3 Way Calling, Aleksandra Janik, Taro Hattori and Michael Damm