UNCANNY VALLEY
Kim Holleman
Uncanny Valley
April 11- May 5, 2013
Senaspace proudly presents Uncanny Valley, a solo exhibition of new works by
Kim Holleman
April 11, 2013 from 6-9pm
The 'Uncanny Valley' was conceived in 1970 by Professor Masahiro Mori and details a relationship between an object's appearance and motion and how people perceive that object. A sense of repulsion develops when the copy is too close to it's original. Between attraction and repulsion, lies the Uncanny Valley.
In Holleman's work, she refreshes the concept of the Uncanny Valley and relates it to the replacement of our natural environment by an increasingly artificial world. Are we slowly replacing nature with a man made version of it?
In a new series of paintings, Holleman plays with different views on future industrial landscapes describing industry intertwined with nature but which are neither utopian nor dystopian. Instead they are found lying somewhere in between. Each painting is drawn and painted using enamels, oil pastels and acrylic on unique commercial vinyl prints. Holleman designs these prints playing with the unique aesthetic characteristics of both print-based copies and hand-painted originals.
In sculptures and glassworks, Holleman combines “discarded but valuable” street trash, imported items from 99cent stores and precious materials. Holleman is playing with perceptions of real and artificial. What has intrinsic value and what is merely a copy of something valuable? Holleman makes lush naturalistic creations which push valueless and banal mass produced materials against natural elements which seem to be growing out of more highly valued materials such as gold, agate, copper, jade and crystal. Holleman seeks to level the material playing field allowing the viewer to ponder- what are the real materials, what are the artificial and what are the precious. In essence, what has value and why? In Uncanny Valley, Holleman asks us what we find to be beautiful as much as what we define as being “real”.
Kim Holleman is an interdisciplinary artist who attended The Cooper Union in New York and the Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, Holland. Because of Kim’s unique blending of art, architecture and nature, she has gained recognition across artistic and academic disciplines. Holleman’s work has been the subject of featured articles in The New York Times, The Metro, Next American City Magazine, The Village Voice, NY Magazine, LMagazine, in the Make Blog, on Gothamist, Inhabitat, Treehugger and more. Holleman is looking forward to her participation in Ideas City at The New Museum of Contemporary Art, May 1-4, 2013.
For more information please contact:
David Sena
Das@Senaspace.com
Senaspace
229 Centre St
NY, NY 10013
212-966-5151