Ted Kincaid: Towards a Queer Transcendence
Kathy Lovas: The Brainerd Album, 2021-present
Francesca Brunetti: The Mushrooms of Plato’s Cave
Opening Reception March 8 | 5-7 PM
March 8 - April 15
Ted Kincaid, In The Subconscious: Desert Dreams, 2024, Ink on Paper, 28 x35”
Artist Ted Kincaid makes a return to Liliana Bloch Gallery with an exhibition that showcases a striking evolution in his artistic practice while preserving the thematic continuity that has defined his remarkable four-decade career. Towards A Queer Transcendence continues the ongoing journey of a conceptual artist increasingly drawn to a realm beyond what can be seen, whose work has continually challenged our notions of what is before us, versus our perceptions, desires, illusions and dreams.
Queer transcendence is a concept that intersects queer theory and spiritual metaphysics. It refers to the idea of moving beyond or surpassing outmoded cultural and traditional binary understandings of gender, sexuality, and identity. This work moves from an exploration of the external world, whether real or imagined, and instead ventures beyond the physical to explore the spiritual, particularly in the form of Queer Inner Divinity; encapsulating the profound recognition and celebration of the inherent sacredness and authenticity within individuals who identify as queer. It signifies the acknowledgment and celebrates the divine essence present within each person, irrespective of gender identity, sexual orientation, or societal norms.
At its core, queer transcendence challenges societal norms and constructs that limit or restrict individuals based on their gender or sexual orientation. It posits the embracing of complexity, ambiguity, and multiplicity in identity, rather than adhering to rigid definitions. It is my goal for this work to truly transgress the constraints of heteronormativity and cisnormativity, as well as exploring alternative ways of being and experiencing the world. It encompasses spiritual or metaphysical dimensions, seeking to connect with something larger while embracing the divine essence of queer identity.
For three decades, Ted Kincaid has systematically subverted the notion of an objective photographic record and examined the play between painting and photography. Kincaid has created multiple series of works that explore the discourse between a manufactured image that appears to be a straightforward photograph and an actual photograph that has been altered so fantastically that the viewer would assume it is a painting. To put it simply, his paintings are informed by photography, and his photographs are influenced by painting.
Kincaid is one of the most recognized and respected artists from North Texas. He has been reviewed in ARTFORUM and is included in the permanent collections of the Dallas Museum of Art, L’Associazione Fotografica Imago, Arezzo, Italy, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Museum of Fine Arts in San Antonio, The Columbus Museum, and the Georgia Museum of Art.
Kathy Lovas, Grandmother, 2021, DASS inkjet transfer print on glass, white wood shelf, manila tag, Print Size: 12"W x 16"H x 1/4"D, Shelf Size: 12"W x 4"D
Kathy Lovas's current and ongoing project titled The Brainerd Album examines a group of images appropriated from an early 20th-century photo album kept by her grandparents, who lived in Brainerd, MN. Printed monochromatically via the DASS inkjet transfer process onto glass, the works are expressive of ideas about memory, ephemerality, surface tension, and references to early photographic processes, such as glass negatives and Cyanotype. The original album of 30 pages contains approximately 100 2x3" silver gelatin photographs taken by her uncle Thomas Walter Cleary of his immediate family, plus friends, pets, and significant buildings, such as the family home and neighborhood school. The glass prints are each presented leaning against a wall on a small support shelf to emphasize the work's 'object-ness' and fragility. A blank manila tag speaks to her ongoing interest in the idea of the archive.
The Brainerd Album project advances her career-long investigation into the ontology of photography. Freely moving between photography, sculpture, and installation, Lovas’s projects are based on narratives about current or historical events, memories from her early life, or familiar subject matter. All her projects examine photographic indexicality, the archive, and the frame.
Kathy Lovas was born in Duluth, Minnesota. She holds a B.S. degree in biology from St. Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Indiana and an MFA in photography from Texas Woman’s University in Denton. She is a 1995 recipient of a Mid-America Arts Alliance National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in photography and was a 1991 fellow of the American Photography Institute National Graduate Seminar at New York University.
Selected exhibitions of her work include Lawndale Art Center, Galveston Art Center, Women and Their Work, Handley-Hicks Gallery, Fort Worth and Old Jail Art Center. In 2018, Lovas had a mid-career retrospective exhibition titled Close-Up-Magic at Gallery 219 at Eastfield College in Dallas, Texas, curated by Iris Bechtol. She has been a resident artist at Project Row Houses in Houston, Connemara Conservancy in Allen, TX and the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida. She recently created site-specific installations at UNT on the Square in Denton, DiverseWorks, the Art Museum of Southeast Texas, the Arlington Museum of Art, UT San Antonio Satellite Space at Blue Star, and the Warehouse Theater in Greenville, SC.
Kathy’s work is included in the following collections: Capital One, Dallas, TX; PINHOLE Resource, San Lorenzo, NM; TRISOLINI Gallery, Ohio University, Athens, OH, and The Willis Library at the University of North Texas in Denton, TX. Kathy Lovas lives and works in Dallas, Texas.
Francesca Brunetti, Untitled (from the series The Mushrooms of Plato’s Caves), 2023, Watercolor, digital painting, 11.7” x 16.5”
The Mushroom’s of Plato’s Cave is about an illustrated, re-designed, posthuman, ecofeminist narrative of Plato’s Myth of the Cave. Plato’s Myth of the Cave has been interpreted by contemporary thinkers as emblematic of Plato’s philosophy and western culture and its anthropocentric and domineering approach to reality. By using watercolor and digital painting in the project, Francesca Brunetti transforms this myth into an alternative eco-feminist visual narrative. The protagonist of the transformed myth is a person who—instead of going up, in the direction of the sun and abstract thinking, as does the male prisoner in Plato’s myth—goes down, underground, in a world populated by fungi, worms and bacteria. Through imagination and drawing, Brunetti creates a visual description where the protagonist of the transformed Plato’s myth discovers a way to relate to her material world that challenges traditional western anthropocentric approaches to reality. In the story traditional western ways of relating to existence—based on a self-centered understanding of the self, the division between body and mind, the understanding of matter as homogeneous and passive and the importance of rationality and control—are replaced with actions and feelings that promote the protagonist’s embeddedness in her material world, her understanding of her interconnection with the elements composing reality, and the transformative potential of ecological joy. By exploring nature’s agency and creativity, the protagonist of Brunetti’s myth gains energies and resources to understand and transform her material existence. The project is a collaboration with the Posthumanities Hub at Linköping University, a platform that fosters new ideas and alliances in the humanities, especially those related to more-than-human perspectives.
Francesca Brunetti, a scholar and Lecturer at the Institute of Creativity and Innovation at Xiamen University in China. With a PhD in Visual and Performing Arts from the University of Texas, Dallas, as well as a MA in Communication Design from the Glasgow School of Art and a MA and BA in Philosophy from La Sapienza University of Rome, her work is deeply informed by feminist philosophy and ecocriticism. She has exhibited internationally in solo and group shows across the USA, UK, Italy, China, and Japan, has held teaching appointments at American, European, and Asian universities; presented artistic projects at international academic conferences; and published articles about her work in peer-reviewed journals.
Feminist theory informs her studio art practice while her artworks provide additional elements to her theoretical investigations into feminism and ecology. Brunetti uses 2D analogue and digital artistic techniques, feminist philosophy, and ecocriticism to explore the relationship between female subjectivity and her material existence, the ecocritical approach to visual cultures, and the representation of women in cultural productions.