Lori KellaStrange Crossings

Jun 5–Jul 31, 2015Lori KellaStrange Crossings

William Busta Gallery2731 Prospect AvenueCleveland OH 44115

W williambustagallery.comT 216.298.9071E bustagallery@gmail.com

Cover:

Tidal Wetlands, 2014

digital chromogenic print;

40 x 30 in.

Top:

Then You Described the Hills

That I Imagined , 2014

digital chromogenic print;

30 x 40 in.

Above, left:

Night Fishing and the

University, 2014

digital chromogenic print;

40 x 30 in.

Above, right:

Circling Over Thermal Vents,

2014

digital chromogenic print;

40 x 30 in.

Opposite:

The Diver, 2014

digital chromogenic print;

40 x 30 in.

Lori Kella builds artificial landscapes on sheets of Plexiglas in her studio, then photographs them in such a way that they look almost real. On a straightforward level, many of her current works refer to conditions of ecological transition, often intimating coming environmental disaster. Made of materials like crumpled paper, poured glycerin, and wool, plus miniature plastic figures and objects, her scenarios are assembled partly for, and partly in, her camera’s lens. Aesthetically, through their evocation of toys and models and commonplace museum exhibition practices, they offer a journey back toward phases of narrative exposition and understanding which underlie adult perception. They review hot-button scientific/political issues, but they also offer a haunting meditation on forgotten childhood learning tropes. A powerful sense of recognition underwrites Kella’s images, a recollection of what it is like to make and change worlds in the spirit of play.

In the digital chromogenic print titled The Diver, a heavily overcast sky threatens a peaceable vacation scene with bunchy gray clouds (made from wool); yet warm, sideways sunshine illuminates the foreground. Kella uses natural light whenever possible, so the impression of late afternoon illumination here is accurate. Light glints on the edges of a rubber raft and a floating wooden diving platform, catching in the branches of trees on the shore. Things are seen floating: Suitcases, boxes, life preservers, and they’re sinking. The entire lower half of the photograph shows the deeps under the

Lori Kella: Photographing the Future

raft, where at last we see the diver herself, in a dark bathing suit and cap. It’s as if a sheet of glass had been placed between us and the scene—like a view into an aquarium, or an ant colony. Maybe we see not only ocean depths here, but impossible angles of dream, of memory and the unconscious.

Kella has said that her work is oriented toward the future, pointing to things that have not yet happened. In The Diver, as in several other pictures at Strange Crossings, this prescience is expressed most directly as a sense of impending catastrophe. The already troubled gray waters slant up, as if tugged toward a distant seismic event. The clouds smother the horizon, and the scattered human belongings in the water seem like an omen.

Night Fishing and the University shows a barren stretch of shoreline along an inland sea. In the distance a dormant volcano rises amid a range of low peaks. The time is just after sunset, and there’s no sign of life except for a few warmly lighted windows in a complex of dusky buildings. Out on the lake a single square-built trawler poises a pair of derricks above the water, like the arms of a crab or a spider, and shines its flood lights downwards. Night Fishing, like The Diver, is divided in half, but here the lower section is a shiny black, with two big bursts of light reflected in its depths, like a car’s headlights on wet blacktop. The suspense is palpable. What Kraken is about to wake, to rend Kella’s desolate (yet oddly peaceful) scene?

The works in Strange Crossings imagine large-scale trauma, but also corresponding samples of intimate experience, as if Kella observed her subjects from far away but also at much closer range, looking up a short, grassy slope (one print here is titled And then you described the hills I imagined) to a horizon that is almost within reach. Doomed or not, in many prints here we can clearly feel the sun, warm on the grass, and observe Kella’s scene at eye level, in a very personal, almost enchanted way. Her documentary style and photographic expertise frame and contain basically lyrical works, which in fact elide differences of scale, of substance and maturity, as Kella re-discovers the magic of more innocent, and more profound, play-dates with information and the fate of the world.

—Douglas Max Utter

Lori Kella

Born 1974, St. Joseph, MI

Lives in Cleveland, OH

lorikella.com

Education

2001 MFA, Photography, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

1997 BFA, Photography, Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH

Selected Recent Solo/Two-Person Exhibitions

2015 Strange Crossings, William Busta Gallery, Cleveland, OH

2014 Artificial Worlds, Shaker Historical Society, Shaker Heights, OH

2013 Looking West, William Busta Gallery, Cleveland, OH

As Above, So Below, Eells Gallery at Blossom Music Center, Cuyahoga Falls, OH

2012 Unnatural Narratives, Dragonfly, Cleveland, OH

2010 Birds of Ohio, Groveland Studios, Cleveland, OH

2009 Lori Kella, Gallery Drei, Dresden, Germany

Elbe, Kent State University Downtown Gallery, Kent, OH

2008 Lori Kella and Annette Gaspers, ROY G BIV Gallery, Columbus, OH

2006 New World Views: Photographs by Lori Kella & Michael Loderstedt, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH

2004 Recent Work, The Cleveland Foundation, Cleveland, OH

2002 Lori Kella: Coordinates, Wendy L. Moore Emerging Artist Series, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH [Catalog]

Selected Recent Group Exhibtions

2015 Wild at Heart, Artspace, Raleigh, NC

2014 NOADA/William Busta Gallery, Transformer Station, Cleveland, OH

2013 Small Worlds, Target Gallery, Torpedo Factory Art Center, Alexandria, VA

Photography’s Back to the Future, Ohio Arts Council Riffe Gallery, Columbus, OH

The Digital Divide, Zygote Press, Cleveland, OH

Homegrown, Cleveland Print Room, Cleveland, OH

End of the World, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA

2012 DIY: Photographers and Books, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

86th Annual International: Photography, The Print Center, Philadelphia, PA

2011 Wild Kingdom, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX

2010 84th Annual International: Photography, The Print Center, Philadelphia, PA

Lake Effect, Heights Arts, Cleveland Heights, OH

2008 Geometry, Flux Space, Philadelphia, PA

2007 Global Anxieties, College of Wooster Art Museum, Wooster, OH [Catalog]

OAC Celebration of Creativity, Riffe Gallery, Columbus, OH [Catalog]

2006 SUPERvision, Foster Gallery, University of Wisconsin– Eau Claire, WI (Juried) [Catalog]

2005 Structures of Experience: an exhibition in response to R obert Smithson, School of Art Gallery at Kent State University, Kent, OH [Catalog]

2004 Strange Affinities: Models of Representation/Visual Perception, Ohio University, Athens, OH

Geographies of Intelligence, Heights Arts, Cleveland Hts, OH

Selected Grants and Honors

2015 Nesnadny & Schwartz Visiting Curator Program, MOCA Cleveland

2013 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award

2009 Creative Workforce Fellowship, Community Partnership for Arts and Culture

2006 Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship

2003 Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship

2002 Wendy L. Moore Emerging Artist Award, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland

Collections

Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell Collection, Transformer Station, Cleveland, OH

B.F. Goodrich Headquarters, Charlotte, NC

The Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland, OH

Hahn Loeser and Parks LLP, Akron, OH

Professional

2002– Assistant Professor (part-time)Present Kent State University, OH

2014 Adjunct Professor, Cleveland Institute of Art, (also 2013, 2004)