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Erasing Borders: Passport to Contemporary Indian Art  Feb-June 2008

Kuzana Ogg

Kuzana Ogg
  Kuzana@yahoo.com

Artist’s Statement

Kuzana Ogg
The home of my great-grandparents is graced by a gigantic mango tree.  As a child, I was taken by my grandmother to visit her mother and siblings there. I used to gaze into the mango tree, marveling at its depth, breadth and multitude of growing leaves and ends. I watched this tree flower, fruit and feed the community with several thousand mangos per year. It also housed hundreds of wild parakeets, beautiful moths and butterflies.

The first pieces in this series are lush in color and complex in form. As the work progresses, the paintings become monochromatic with symbolic punctuations of color. The latter part of the series contains more abstract work: shapes are compressed and simplified, while color is flattened. These paintings share a contemplative quality celebrating change and growth as experienced in nature and humanity.

Currently, I am working with images of persimmons and lotus leaves. These distilled forms, combined with layers of varying transparency, seek to convey my experiences and memories of life in the small town of Kyung Ju, South Korea. By grafting the lotus leaves onto stems of the persimmon fruit, I am synthesizing two distinct plant species. This is often the way that memory works, recombining and filtering truths.


EXHIBITIONS AND PROJECTS


2007
Harwood Museum
Taos, NM
Group show sponsored by the National Museum of Women in the Arts. 

2007
Theertha Red Dot Gallery
Pitakotte, Sri Lanka
Group show. Exhibited two handmade books on banana paper. Each book is embroidered with silk thread. “Letters”, a 19 foot long book, displays Sinhala characters. “Tall Tree”, a 32 foot long work, has an abstracted tree form swaying across its pages.

2007
Montgomery College
Rockville, MD
Group show of miniatures.

2007 
The Gallery at the Mesa Public Library 
Los Alamos, NM
Solo exhibition of new work. A series of 12 large botanical oil paintings entitled Mango Season

2006 
Anderson Center
Red Wing, MN
Group show. “Chamisa” and “Chamisa II” are highly patterned and ornamented figurative works in oil.

2003 
New Mexico School of Mines 
Socorro, NM
Group show. Exhibited experimental drawings in several mediums.

1995
Schwarinsky Gallery 
New York, NY
Group show . Exhibited miniature oil painting.

1994
Triangle Gallery
Purchase, NY
Solo exhibition of 20 large scale works on paper. These consisted of mixed media, oil and pastel. I had just returned from a trip to the south of India. It was a simultaneously enjoyable and disturbing experience. The paintings in this group dealt with the feeling of time passing, aging relatives and the pain of loss and separation from extended family. The feelings of despair are mitigated by the joyful, life-affirming colors.

EDUCATION AND AWARDS

2007
Theertha International Artists’ Collective 
Pitakotte, Sri Lanka
One month juried residency at the collective in Sri Lanka. I completed two embroidered works on banana paper.

2002
Anderson Center
Red Wing, MN
One month juried residency at the interdisciplinary center. I completed several oil paintings, a series of monoprints, and a 12 panel oil on masonite accordion style book

1996 - 2001
Travel 
South Korea
Lived and painted in several South Korean cities

1991-1995 
SUNY Purchase 
Purchase, NY
BFA in Studio Arts, graduated cum laude in 1995
Frances B. Hook merit scholarship for achievement in drawing in 1992
SUNY Purchase Feminist studio art award in 1994
Two month summer session at the Scoula Lorenzo di Medici in Florence, Italy 1993
   

  
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