Fall 2025 Gallery Guide

L1.
Primal Landscape #5 (2013)
India ink on Arches paper   |  MOCRA collection • Gerald R. and Mary Reid Brunstrom Gift of Art from Australia

L2.  
Primal Landscape #15 (2013)
India ink on Arches paper   |  MOCRA collection • Gerald R. and Mary Reid Brunstrom Gift of Art from Australia

L3.
Cadaqués #5, Cadaqués #2, Cadaqués #4, Cadaqués #6 (2003)
sea-weathered objects, mixed technique   |  MOCRA collection • Gerald R. and Mary Reid Brunstrom Gift of Art from Australia

Originally from Brisbane, Australia, Karen Papacek moved to Europe in 1990, first to Barcelona, then later to Paris and ultimately Normandy, France, where she now resides. She has exhibited internationally in Australia, Europe, and the United States, with notable ties to St. Louis via Mary Reid Brunstrom and Austral Gallery. 

Beginning with Papacek’s 1993 installation Safe House, which covered the Austral Gallery walls from floor to ceiling with 941 individual works encompassing drawing and text, she has continued to explore the activation of space with large-scale installations and public sculptures. In 1997, in collaboration with Roseann Weiss and the New Art in the Neighborhood Program of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (then Forum for Contemporary Art), Papacek led the participating youth in executing a design for a Bi-State bus shelter near the Saint Louis University campus at Lindell and Grand boulevards. The “Drawing Installation Project,” a 2005 collaboration with Janice Brunstrom-Hernandez, M.D., of the Cerebral Palsy Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital and numerous volunteers, became a model for the creation of a collective narrative while maintaining the integrity of the voices of individual participants.

Papacek’s creative process concentrates on drawing, painting, sculpture and artist books, often in series or installation form —outstanding examples of each are on display in the exhibition Intersections at the Saint Louis University Museum of Art. Describing herself as “fundamentally a figurative symbolist,” since the late 1980s, Papacek’s focus has been on environmental issues.

This focus is apparent in the Primal Landscapes on display. Executed in subtle ink washes on parallel bands of paper, the figure-free expanses draw attention to the silhouette and contours of the land, pristine vistas untouched by human contact. The separation of the papers lends a jolt of unreality or dissonance. At a cursory glance, the lower band reads like a reflection seen in a placid mountain lake, but upon closer examination, we realize it is an imperfect reflection, or perhaps another reality altogether.

Papacek made a series of small sculptures from materials gathered during an artist residency in Cadaqués, a historic fishing village on northeast Spain’s Costa Brava that has been frequented by artists including Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró and Marcel Duchamp. Mary Reid Brunstrom describes these delicate works with their carefully balanced and delightful juxtapositions as “almost balletic.” Brunstrom suggests that through them Papacek is in dialogue with the history of sculpture — the Winged Victory of Samothrace, Picasso’s bulls, or Jean Arp’s rearrangeable assemblages. “So much meaning can be carried in a small, fragile object,” says Brunstrom, “a refinement that can be difficult to reconcile with the roughness of the materials.”

L4.
Here and Now,  Echoes from the Distant Past (1993)
etching; edition: 46/100  |  MOCRA collection • Gerald R. and Mary Reid Brunstrom Gift of Art from Australia

L5.
Lord Howe Island (1994)
etching; edition: 30/80  |  MOCRA collection • Gerald R. and Mary Reid Brunstrom Gift of Art from Australia

Jörg Schmeisser is considered one of the foremost printmakers of his generation. Incredible technical proficiency — demonstrated by the work’s level of detail, variety of tonality, and subtlety of color — combines a dreamlike layering and interweaving of imagery to produce what Mary Reid Brunstrom describes as a culmination of “technique, artistry, and vision.”

The German-born Schmeisser’s extensive travels through Europe, Asia and Australia were persistent influences in his work. In 1965, he joined an excavation team from the University of Missouri to record artifacts at a dig site in Israel. The technical skills he developed in documenting artifacts, sites, and architecture in detailed drawings are evident throughout his artistic output, but as curator Eric Denker notes, “Schmeisser’s respect for the achievements of the past is an essential component of his art.”

Alongside his appreciation for cultural artifacts, Schmeisser was a keen observer of the natural world. Expansive new vistas opened for him when he moved to Australia in 1978 to become head of the Printmaking Workshop at Canberra School of Art. Peter Haynes writes that for Schmeisser, “landscape is as much about place as it is about memory, is as much about the geographic as it is about the cultural, and is ultimately mostly about the complex overlaying of all of these things, and the consequent impact of this on the individual.”

The artwork title, Here and Now, Echoes of the Distant Past, aptly summarizes the major trajectories in Schmeisser’s art. The densely layered imagery includes fragments of ancient sculptures of deities and mythological creatures, geometric patterns from Asia and the Middle East and elsewhere, reflecting his interest in archeology and appreciation for human material culture. At the same time, the presence of flora and fauna and natural landscape suggest his commitment to recording fully and objectively not just the surface but the essence of place and object.

Lord Howe Island is part of an island group located about 300 miles off the southeastern coast of Australia. Schmeisser’s print, like the island itself, is dominated by two volcanic mountains. The abundance of flora and fauna depicted signals that Lord Howe Island is primarily untouched forest and home to an abundance of plants and animals, many of them found nowhere else in the world. We might imagine Schmeisser recording from some vantage point both the broad vistas and the minutiae of life and detritus on the storm-tossed shore.

Art critic Alice Thorson compares Schmeisser’s art to the Renaissance-era Kunstkabinett or Wunderkammer — a “cabinet of curiosities” that brings together multifarious objects from the natural world with human-made artifacts. While some collectors sought to decipher the order of the universe through these objects, others displayed their collections in an intuitive fashion that was, in Thorson’s words, “a tribute to the wonder and mystery of all facets of existence.” Schmeisser’s prints represent an alchemy of both impulses, faithfully documenting his observations while allowing himself the joy of surprise and discovery in each juxtaposition.

L6.
Heart of Exile VIII (1988)
watercolor and gouache on paper  |  MOCRA collection • Gerald R. and Mary Reid Brunstrom Gift of Art from Australia

Raised in England in rural East Sussex, Ian Friend left his role as assistant curator of prints at London’s Tate Gallery in 1985 to relocate to Melbourne, Australia, to teach at the Victorian College of the Arts. The striking transition to the wide expanses of Australia became a key driver in the development of his work as he explored his new surroundings.

Spanning sculpture, painting, printmaking and drawing, Friend’s work is marked by a deep understanding of his materials and often exacting, time-intensive methods. He is rigorously committed to process yet open to the unexpected, frequently working in sequences or series that evolve over the course of years. At times, his work responds to the written word in poetry or philosophy, but at others, it arises from immediate sensations and lasting memories of his encounters with specific places.

For instance, Friend notes that the Heart of Exile series originated in “specific perceptions” and “emphatic responses” in an area called Koongarra, now part of Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory of Australia, which is home to many examples of Aboriginal rock art spanning at least 25,000 years.

Friend employs watercolor’s “possibilities of translucent layering and staining to achieve some degree of correspondence to the original impetus for the works — a specific rock face.” The multiple layers of paint evoke the erosion and abrasion of the rock surface by both the harsh climate and human mark-making. Scale and depth in this painting are ambiguous; the eye may zoom back and forth from a vertiginous overview to focus on a small detail. Poet Laurie Duggan notes, “In Ian Friend’s work we are aware of ambiguous space and many levels of focus.”

Friend has disclosed that the title, Heart of Exile, relates to his “voluntary exile” from the United Kingdom. The tapered form in this work, which recurs throughout the series, “stands for a metaphorical heart/self-portrait, placed in a series of different situations, sometimes, but not always, relating to specific experiences.”

Friend has a long association with MOCRA, dating to his 1995 solo exhibition, The Edge of Belief – paintings, sculpture, and works on paper, 1980–1994. That exhibition, curated by MOCRA’s founding director, Terrence Dempsey, S.J., was organized and facilitated by Mary Brunstrom, who represented Friend’s work at Austral Gallery. One of the paintings from the exhibition centerpiece, The Protestant Affliction, is on display in a side chapel on the opposite side of the museum.

L7.
Mars/Target (1991)
diptych; oil on linen, copper, tapestry, and wood  |  MOCRA collection • Gerald R. and Mary Reid Brunstrom Gift of Art from Australia

Connecting people and art was the through line of Robyn Daw’s multifaceted career as artist, curator, writer, educator and arts administrator. Though she was adept in various media, including drawing, painting, printmaking and sculpture, textiles were the heart of Daw’s artistic practice. In the late 1980s she worked as a weaver at the Australian Tapestry Workshop in Melbourne, an international center of contemporary tapestry, where Daw and her colleagues collaborated with international and Australian artists to realize exceptional handwoven works of art. Fellow artist Pat Hoffie notes that Daw’s tapestry works are “evidence of the artist’s love of process, of repetition, of quietness, of reduction, of elegant understatement.”

With sharp wit, Daw questioned the positioning of textile art as a “craft” secondary to “fine art” media such as painting. To that end, she helped organize exhibitions such as Tapestry with Attitude, presented at Austral Gallery in 1994. The present work, Mars/Target, is itself a gentle provocation that juxtaposes tapestry with painting and an allusion to sculpture.

Daw had a lifelong interest in science and the natural world. Following the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990, she produced a number of works featuring heavenly bodies and the search for distant galaxies. Mars/Target dates from this period.

The work is structured in multilayered, playful juxtapositions, beginning with the materials: the “fine arts” of oil on canvas and (sculptural) copper, are both segregated from and united to the “craft” of tapestry by the grey wooden frame. The Red Planet rises in the lower half of the painting as one of its moons descends into view from the upper portion. Intense reds and blues in the painting contrast with the subtly varied greys and charcoals of the tapestry. Flowing circles and ellipses in the painting dialogue with the lines of the cross that emerges from the gridded warp and weft of the tapestry. The deep black of space in the painting is echoed in the textured, organic ground of the textile. The copper band serves as both divider and connector, a relatively impersonal metal taken from the earth juxtaposed with the labor-intensive work of painting and weaving.

Daw’s untimely death in 2022 was a source of loss and grief to her loved ones and friends as well as to the wider artistic community. Lux Aeterna, a 2023 exhibition at Jan Manton Gallery in Brisbane, brought Daw’s work together for the first time with that of her longtime partner, Ian Friend. We are honored to present their work side-by-side here at MOCRA. 

Cibachrome print  |  MOCRA collection • a gift of Justin Sweeney

Jon Cournoyer is a St. Louis-based artist whose keen sense of composition and witty juxtaposition is apparent in his collages and photomontages. Cournoyer applies those techniques in this work to memorialize a time and place of personal significance, as he reflects: 

Observing the onset of the HIV/AIDS crisis in San Francisco during the early 1980s was the impetus for a decade-long series of photographs exploring fear, pain, grief, anger, and ultimately hope. ... From the 1980s through the end of the twentieth century I would make pilgrimage to El Santuario de Chimayo [in Chimayo, New Mexico]. Founded in 1816, this church is one of the places where I found solace. I felt magic there. I felt the healing properties that exist within the soil. I took several friends there and smeared the sacred dirt on the foreheads in hopes that the healing properties of the soil and the blood of Christ would bring about a new life for them. ... Regardless of what causes unsettling times, the power of creativity is unleashed and is the antithesis of despair.  

Magic, faith, spirituality, and unity can be discovered when we strip ourselves of our differences. Then, we can collectively move forward with a better understanding and compassion for humanity.

• What places or rituals bring you a sense of healing?

C-print with gold leaf and hand painted  |  MOCRA collection

An awareness of current political and social conditions is evident in the work of Guatemalan artist Luis González Palma, one of Latin America’s most significant contemporary photographers. Frequently, his subjects are his country’s indigenous Maya, who have endured centuries of violence and indignity but who fiercely preserve and promote their cultural heritage. González Palma’s often dramatically manipulated prints evoke both history and timeless mystery. 

This portrait of a young woman of Maya ancestry, surrounded by a corona of light and framed in gold, suggests the stillness and compelling engagement evoked by a traditional icon. It is common in Guatemalan society for indigenous people to cast their eyes down in the presence of someone of a higher class. The artist reverses this situation by having his Maya subjects face directly into the camera and highlighting their eyes. Viewers are thus compelled to meet the gaze (in Spanish, la mirada) of the subjects.

• Do you ever find it hard to look somebody in the eyes?

The artist’s work is discussed in Episode 23 of the MOCRA Voices podcast, Martha Schneider.

Listen to the Podcast

oil on canvas  |  MOCRA collection

Trinidadian-American artist Gary Logan explores our unique relationship with the Earth and its elements, drawing visual and conceptual inspiration from both Taoism and the romantic tradition in painting. Through landscape imagery and the language of the sublime, he navigates the complex terrain of identity and human nature. His work speaks to universal concerns such as oppression, freedom, race, sexuality, healing, and renewal, as well as his concerns for the health of our planet.

Red Sea began as a meditation on the connection between the saltiness of human blood and tears, and the saline oceans where terrestrial life likely originated. Logan also had in mind J. M. W. Turner’s painting Slave Ship, a work that evokes pathos and terror in its representation of the implacable ocean and the unfathomable suffering inflicted on enslaved Africans during the Middle Passage. The painting also draws attention to the warming of the oceans as a result of human activity, and the potentially disastrous impact of climate change on all life on earth.

• Is there an artwork (or piece of music, or book, or movie, etc.) that has a strong hold on your memory?

Logan discusses his work in the MOCRA Voices video “A Conversation with Gary Logan.” 

Watch the Artist Talk

papercut  |  MOCRA collection

The tradition of Jewish papercutting dates back to at least the 14th century, and it became an important folk art among both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews. The art form almost disappeared in the first half of the 20th century, due both to emigration and to the Holocaust. During the last 50 years, however, papercut art as a means of Jewish expression has been revived.

Israeli artist Archie Granot goes beyond the traditional bounds of classic motifs and styles with his asymmetrical works built up of multiple layers of interlaced designs, creating a three-dimensional relief in what is usually a two-dimensional medium.
This work references the Biblical passage Exodus 13:21–22. As Granot explains, 

This text surrounds the two abstract “pillars” at the center of the work. One of them “goes before the camp” and sits on the cream paper while the other, cut into the cream paper, “goes after the camp.”

• How would you express the story of a significant transition in your life?

Granot discusses his work in Episode 4 of the MOCRA Voices podcast, Archie Granot.

Listen to the Podcast

acrylic on paper  |  MOCRA collection • a gift of Leslie and Ronald Ostrin

Adrian Kellard was a skilled draftsman and artist (he studied art at SUNY Purchase and SUNY Empire State), but he chose to work in everyday materials and in a folk-like style — he came from blue collar roots and sought to create art that would be accessible to people of all social standings. Throughout his art, Kellard explored his experience as an Irish-Italian, Catholic, gay man loved by God.

The term “Man of Sorrows” refers to a devotional image focusing on the suffering of Christ, who typically is displayed from the waist up and bearing the wounds of his Passion. The title derives from Isaiah 53:3: “He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.”

Kellard found inspiration in a 13th-century Crucifixion by Italian artist Coppo di Marcovaldo. Kellard renders the powerful face of the Coppo work in a bold graphic style and isolates it behind a wire screen and bars. The spare black, white and silver colors that dominate this work contrast with Kellard’s typical bold colors. Still, a bright yellow hint of Jesus’ halo shines from behind the bars, and significantly, a small carved red cross is found in the lower left of the work. Those who are imprisoned might identify with Kellard’s Man of Sorrows — whether they are literally confined in a cell, or living in prisons without walls, the kinds created by society, or circumstance, or our own choices. 

• How is the experience of this work different if you imagine that Jesus is on the outside of the bars looking in at you?

The artist’s work is discussed in Episode 2 of the MOCRA Voices podcast, Adrian Kellard.

Listen to the Podcast

archival digital print; edition: 3/15  |  MOCRA collection

In July 2003, Tom Kiefer began working part-time as a janitor and groundskeeper at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection processing facility near Ajo, Arizona. When given permission to collect food confiscated from migrants and asylum seekers and donate it to a local food pantry, he was deeply moved at finding personal belongings in the trash bins along with the food. These items, necessary for hygiene, comfort and survival, were deemed “non-essential” or “potentially lethal” and seized and discarded by border control officials.

Kiefer began to quietly rescue what items he could, and he resigned from his job in August 2014 to focus on photographing and documenting them. The ongoing project, El Sueño Americano / The American Dream, commemorates the untold stories these objects embody, preserving traces of human journeys cut short.

43, Neutral is one of Kiefer’s “mass assemblies,” which evoke both the great numbers of people arriving from diverse points of origin and the failure of convoluted immigration policies and systems. He frequently speaks of the “sacred” quality of these items and of the people they belonged to. From clothing to personal hygiene products to tools to cologne bottles, Kiefer’s photographs unravel preconceived notions and boundaries between “sacred” and “profane.” He notes:

This work is about humanity, and the inhumanity of how we treat others, those who are the most vulnerable. . . . This work is about the preciousness and the importance of everybody, how we’re interconnected—we need each other.

• Have you ever realized that you were seeing someone as a member of a group rather than as an individual? Have you been on the other side of that experience?

The artist discusses his work in the MOCRA Voices video collection “Pertenencias.”

Watch the Videos

digital C-print, AP  |  MOCRA collection • a gift of Terrence E. Dempsey, S.J.

DoDo Jin Ming is among the generation of Chinese artists who experienced the tumultuous years of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, and the Tiananmen Square uprising in 1989. A 1988 exhibition of Joseph Beuy’s drawings caused her to abandon a musical career for a life in the visual arts. The artist, who now resides in New York City, refers to her photographic work as “dream images that make up the landscape of my soul, my second vision.”

Jin Ming’s work is situated in the tradition of the sublime in art. The sublime has been understood as something beyond normal experience and perhaps beyond human understanding. The sublime can inspire awe, terror and an acute sense of our own creaturehood in the face of forces beyond our power to control.

Jin Ming’s tumultuous Free Element seascapes link her in power to the oceans and avalanches painted by J. M. W. Turner, but in technique they descend from pioneering 19th-century French photographer Gustave Le Gray. Like Le Gray, she blurs the distinction between sky and sea by combining several negatives to create a single print. Art historian James Yood states that Jin Ming presents “the ocean as ominous and revelatory, a spiritual theater of awe and power that by implication renders humans insignificant and trivial.”

• Is there a place that helps you feel a sense of wonder, awe, or spiritual connection?

unique gelatin silver paper negative  |  MOCRA collection

The Sunburned series has its roots in a camping trip, during which McCaw accidentally overexposed his film while trying to record an all-night exposure of the stars. He was fascinated by the results: a solarized image (dark areas appeared light and light areas appeared dark) and a hole burnt in the negative by the light of the sun. Since then, McCaw has been intentionally manipulating these phenomena to create haunting images of the natural world that evoke feelings of the sublime. He explains that,

By putting the paper in my film holder, in place of film, I create a one-of-a-kind paper negative. . . . The gelatin in the paper gets cooked and leaves wonderful colors of orange and red, with ash that ranges from a glossy black to an iridescent metallic surface. . . . the sun has become an active participant in part of the printmaking.

McCaw uses large-format cameras and vintage papers, and makes careful calculations about the position of his cameras and length of exposure to record the arc of the sun traveling across the sky.

• Have you ever had a “happy accident” that led to a discovery or insight?

acrylic on canvas  |  MOCRA collection • a gift of Robert and Marcia Lange

Maurine Kngwarreye was born in the Utopia region in Central Australia. In the late 1970s, the women of Utopia were introduced to batik and other dyeing and textile-painting techniques. The art of Utopia gained swift prominence and highlighted the influential role of female artists and their distinct themes in Aboriginal art. Kngwarreye and other artist of Utopia frequently adapted designs used in body painting for Awelye (women’s ceremonies) for their batik work and later in other media such as painting. The ceremonies begin with the women painting each other’s bodies in designs relating to a particular woman’s Dreaming. 

“The Dreaming” is a term applied to a complex of Australian Aboriginal beliefs. It is most commonly understood to express a time when creation ancestor heroes traveled the land, creating sacred sites and sometimes becoming one with the landscape. However, it also implies unbroken continuity with Aboriginal people today, guiding their relationship with the land, shaping moral codes, and transmitting cultural knowledge. An Aboriginal person may “own” a specific Dreaming, becoming its custodian and transmitting the Dreaming to future generations. 

Although we may not be privy to the specific cultural knowledge encoded in this painting, the presence of recognizable plants and animals situates us in the desert landscape, and the paint colors chosen echo the body paint made from minerals, plants, and other natural pigments.

• Are there parts of your heritage that you share with others? Parts that you keep within your family or community?

oil on canvas; third in a series of five paintings   |  MOCRA collection • a gift of the artist and Gerald and Mary Reid Brunstrom

Australian artist Ian Friend uses the 16th-century German painter Hans Holbein’s The Dead Christ in the Tomb as the source for his five-panel series. In fact, the panels of The Protestant Affliction are the exact dimensions of the Holbein painting.

The title comes from a section heading of a 1988 essay, “Holbein’s Dead Christ,” by Bulgarian cultural theorist Julia Kristeva. Both Kristeva and Friend reduce the dead body of Christ to a series of geometric shapes — she in writing and he in pictorial representation. Art historian John C. Welchman notes, “Friend has participated in the process of what Kristeva calls the ‘well-nigh anatomical stripping of the corpse’ and the ‘reduction to a minimum.’”

Yet to refer to Friend’s work as minimal is to miss the power of the varying brush strokes and the subtle color variations. In breaking down the body of Christ into its simplest geometric shapes, Friend suggests the decay that is implicit in physical death itself.

Learn more about contemporary Australian in Episode 8 of the MOCRA Voices podcast, Mary Reid Brunstrom.

Listen to the Podcast

gold leaf, mica powder, and acrylic on canvas  |  MOCRA collection • a gift of the artist

New York-based Susan Schwalb is one of the foremost figures in the revival of the ancient technique of silverpoint drawing in America. A silverpoint drawing is made by dragging a silver rod or wire across a prepared surface. (Other metals can be used as well, referred to generally as metalpoint). In contrast to the traditional use of silverpoint for figurative imagery, Schwalb’s work is resolutely abstract, and her handling of the technique is highly innovative.

The Tree of Life series evolved from a prior series titled Let there be lights in the firmament. Both series represent a significant departure in medium for Schwalb, as they feature acrylic and gold or silver leaf on paper without silverpoint drawing, along with lines and shapes scratched on the surface of the painting.

Schwalb says that the Tree of Life paintings envision our universe, elevated to a metaphysical or spiritual plane. An abstracted tree form emerges from a glimmering golden surface with an explosive impact. With these works, Schwalb had in mind “the peculiar brilliance of the light of Jerusalem as it is reflected in the golden stones of the city.”

• Light is a powerful symbol with many possible meanings — what does light mean for you?

Schwalb discusses her work in Episode 15 of the MOCRA Voices podcast, MOCRA Memories – Sanctuaries.

Listen to the Podcast

acrylic on board  |  MOCRA collection • a gift of the artist

Salma Arastu was born in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan, home to sites sacred to both Hindus and Muslims. A major turning point in her life came when Arastu married her husband, a Muslim, and converted to Islam from the Hindu tradition in which she was raised. Eventually, the couple settled in the San Francisco Bay Area, where Arastu creates work in a variety of media, including painting, drawing, printmaking and sculpture.

Arastu is passionately committed to calling for respect and harmony among religions. This work comes from a series called “Unity of Symbols and Sacred Texts.” Arastu says she began this series

in the hope of reflecting the interconnectedness of belief in our collective cultural memory of origination of stories and use of script in conveying spiritual teachings. . . . We live in a global world today, and we are connected, our destiny is shared; we can only find peace and success when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations.

This work incorporates symbols connected with Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, Sikhism, Baha'i and Buddhism. The central glyph interlinks the symbol for the sacred word Om and the Arabic word for Allah. Other symbols include the Christian cross, Judaism’s six-sided Star of David, and the lotus flower associated with Buddhism.

• Have you had an interfaith experience? How did it change your understanding of another faith or of your own?

acrylic on canvas over wood  |  MOCRA collection • purchase made possible through the generosity of Debbie Laites and Ben Z. Post

New York artist Tobi Kahn is a painter and sculptor whose works have been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions, and are found in major museum, corporate, and private collections. He has also designed meditative and memorial spaces. Kahn writes, “In my paintings and sculpture, I am trying to distill the complex beauty of the world into its elemental forms, while evoking at the same time the mystery beneath such simplicity.” Kahn is interested in the interaction between memory and place. His titles are invented words–ambiguous but evocative, inviting us to make associations, just as the painted images jog recognition.

This work is part of Kahn’s Sky and Water series, a recurrent theme in his work since the 1980s. The forms in his paintings register as landscapes, although with ambiguous, shifting relationships. Art historian Donald Kuspit writes that sky and water “are elemental opposites, and Kahn’s horizon line marks their opposition, separating them — but also linking them, even reconciling or at least balancing them, however shifting the balance ...” The expansive vista invites the viewer into a space of spiritual and philosophical contemplation.

• Are there places that have a special resonance in your memory?

The artist discusses his work in Episode 11 of the MOCRA Voices podcast, Tobi Kahn.

Listen to the Podcast

sumi ink and gold on hatome paper   |  MOCRA collection

Oregon-based artist Robert Kostka said that underlying all of his images is the Japanese principle of ma (間), which he describes (in a reference to dancer-choreographer Martha Graham) as being “in the inner movements and the spaces between the movements.”

The Solar Barge series is one of several major series by Kostka. He references the ancient Egyptian belief that upon death, the soul of the pharaoh was carried in the solar barge to rejoin the sun god Ra. The works evoke the cycle of life, death, and rebirth, as well as a sense of journey. The rhythm of light and dark values forms a yin-yang relationship of complementary but interrelated substances, with brilliant dabs of gold burning amidst shadowy ink forms.

• Do you have any practices that give your days a sense of rhythm or order?