NEWER WORK
BE | LONGING (Image) WORK-IN-PROGRESS (W-I-P)
2023 (Ongoing), Mixed Media, AI cleaning devices, dimensions variable
Two of the greatest impacts on civilization over the next decade will be Artificial Intelligence (AI) and migration. Already the influences of both are seen around the world, from the United States to Europe and Asia. Migrants often work low-paying maintenance jobs in new, unfamiliar countries. Meanwhile, AI is taking over those same jobs. "Be|Longing" examines the intertwined relationship of both, as intensely personalized backpacks navigate the unfamiliar space of the gallery. The number of robot/bags can be varied according to the gallery. Each unit in the work is forced to change course due to obstacles, gallery goers -- and each other. The promised ease of automated tasks in our lives joins with our anxiety of the robot/bags defining the space we occupy. As they move, we feel their personalities as each backpack/robot takes on characteristics that seem human: confident or timid, quick to move or hesitant, etc.
Western Promise
2023, Plastic, steel wire, water, 8.5” x 4” x 200”
One of civilization’s greatest contradictions concerns our relationship to the environment and how we value it: as a resource to be enjoyed or exploited; as our heritage and commons, or a prize for the rich; and also as the space we occupy, and how we determine who those occupants will be. "Western Promise" is a Fibonacci sequence comprised of water bottles wrapped in barbed wire with escalating amounts of water contained in each. It examines potability and portability, human survival made difficult by unnatural means, and embodies issues of water scarcity, allocation and conservation in the famous "golden mean."
FROZEN ASSETS (Image)
2021, water-based ink on parchment, ice. Dimensions 10.5” x 6” x 5”
Frozen Assets explores the fragility of value and the disruption of our shared, common understanding of our own culture when works of art are sequestered in warehouses and tax haven freeports while waiting for their value to rise so they can be “flipped” for profit. By reproducing what appears to be US $10,000, created with water-based ink and then frozen in a block of ice, the work appears strong and timeless yet can only exist within the confines of a freezer. Any attempt to free the paper within by thawing or breaking the ice will result in the smearing and destruction of the reproductions.
© Copyright K. Frech. All rights reserved.
SUGAR BEAR (Image) WORK-IN-PROGRESS (W-I-P)
2021, mixed media: water, sugar, wood, glass and video. Dimensions variable.
Sugar Bear explores the impact of global warming through the use of familiar icons as well as kitsch: snow globes, polar bears, and calaveras, Spanish for “skull,” and often represented on the day-of-the-dead as a sugar skull. As the sugar-based polar bears in the snow globe(s) melts, it becomes the “snow” in the globe, until both the bear and its component sugar have dissolved. Video time lapse presents a different scale of time and impact to guide the viewer. This project is modular, and can utilize any number of snow globes and bears in a showing.
© Copyright K. Frech. All rights reserved.
