Kaylyn Gerenz

In collaboration with the UW-Madison art department, ALL is presenting a reception for the two winners of their exhibition awards for graduating fine arts MFA students. Sculpture artist Kaylyn Gerenz’s pieces are constructed with everyday objects, like the notecards that she utilizes to comment on documentation. The painter Fikriye Oz looks at the ways groups of people are worn down by global capitalism by depicting spaces in decay.

press release: Arts + Literature Laboratory proudly announces two upcoming exhibitions by the recipients of the inaugural ALL Prize, a collaboration with the UW-Madison Art Department, which seeks to provide two outstanding graduating MFA students with an extended MFA thesis exhibition opportunity in the community. Kaylyn Gerenz presents It's This Way Now from Wednesday, March 21 through Saturday, April 21, 2018. Fikriye Oz presents Slow Death from Tuesday, April 3 through Saturday, April 21, 2018. The artists' reception for both prizewinners will be held on Saturday, April 7, 2018, 7-9pm. Gallery hours are Tuesday-Friday, 11am-3pm and Saturday 12-5pm, and by appointment (email hello@artlitlab.org). The gallery will be open by appointment only from March 27-31, 2018.

Kaylyn Gerenz is currently pursing a Master in Fine Arts degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work examines why there is an urgency and need to document, to record in order to remember. Looking to moments where the unseen is visible, Gerenz utilizes banal materials from domestic spaces. Gerenz received her BFA from MSU-Moorhead and has been awarded annual academic scholarships and several artistic grants, such as the LRAC: Professional Development Grant. Enjoying community engagement, Gerenz has worked in art museums in both North Dakota and Minnesota in various positions such as Program Director, Curator, Educational Assistant, and Course Instructor. Gerenz has exhibited work in Italy, LA, MD, MN, ND and WI and has worked as a Project Assistant for various professional artists. She is an Instructor of Record at UW-Madison currently teaching Art 100, an introductory course for non-art majors.

Kaylyn Gerenz Artist Statement: There is urgency in documentation. To record in order to remember. Where immediacy meets intimacy. Documenting is used to gauge progress and development, to track behaviors and patterns, to gain self-awareness and memory retention. It is often simply an attempt to chronicle the past, to map out a temporal topography. As we negotiate and collect moments within everyday life, experiences accumulate and build. The hierarchies of these moments constantly fluctuate between the minuscule and the monumental, slipping in and out of stasis as they are acknowledged or ignored.

My work investigates the ephemeral and accumulative qualities of memory, and how these serve to structure and mirror the nature of daily experience. Every Day I’ve Known You and You’ve Known Me is an archive of time, where every day is recorded as a single tick mark. Stretching across a ten foot piece of paper, days grow into weeks, months, years, and the tick marks begin to form a trajectory. The direction in which they flow may be clear, but there is no distinct destination, no definite beginning or end. As each day passes, another tick mark is added, ceaselessly following an invisible path to somewhere, marching together to a place that we cannot go.

Note cards provide a small blank space for a short and succinct message. They allow for review, revision, and recitation. Note cards aid in memorization and comprehension of information, house lists of instructions or ingredients, and are makeshift spaces for thoughts. In Things we say now, the annotations on the note cards are abbreviated and severed from their original phrase. The reference and conversation are incomplete. Empty note cards are placeholders for thoughts to come or once removed, moments that have been revisited, lost, or accepted, leaving gaps in an otherwise complete grid. The use of disposable, readily available materials of painter’s tape and sharpie marker emphasizes the immediacy, commonality, and temporary nature of these phrases.

In the I’m Still Looking series, rectangle pieces of acrylic are covered in circles of dense rubber. The works are installed at eye level, mimicking the height of a mirror or portrait. Thousands of rubber blemishes build upon the reflective acrylic, their dense surface obscuring an otherwise clear reflection. This controlled and contained lunar landscape absorbs all light and identity. The polished acrylic plane is now only able to reflect glimmers of recognition behind the viewer, unable to see straight ahead.

Coating something in sugar makes it sweeter, more desirable and palatable. The Bittersweet series explores this notion of sugarcoating and how it is used to make something superficially acceptable or easier to digest. Clothing that was once used to protect or hide skin is now encased in a shell of sugar. The soft fibers are now hardened, though the new layer of callused skin is slick and glossy, like saliva.  It smoothes out imperfections and reflects glints of light. The item is now frozen in time, paused, and seemingly serene. However, it is stuck within a viscous layer for examination, its familiar form now unfamiliar, more fragile, and harder to see.