Togonon Gallery

Togonon Gallery is pleased to present four painters and two photographers in a summer exhibition that explores the ways in which artists immortalize the world around them.   Like historians, artists create representations of reality. Over time these representations replace memory and become reality.  In this show, each artist depicts a landscape through either a literal, figurative, political, or personal lens, and finds various ways of preserving memories within his/her art.

Kristen van Diggelen looks critically upon the social-political climate of the West Coast.  She expresses the struggles and conflicts she has as a member of West Coast society through her oil paintings of battlegrounds.  Van Diggelen received her B.A. from UCLA in 2006. She earned the MFA Graduate Fellowship at the San Francisco Art Institute where she received her M.F.A. in 2009. Van Diggelen lives and works in San Francisco.

Tomashi Jackson explores the use of light sensitive materials that have the ability to hold and preserve memory. Jackson explores how waste management affects landscapes and indigenous collective memory. Just as humans impact the environment, so the varying relationship between viewer and artwork constantly transforms the piece. Jackson will complete her B.F.A. in 2010 from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York. She is the 2008 recipient for Benjamin Menschel Fellowship for Creative Inquiry. Jackson lives and works in New York.

Bernardo Poggi Leigh explores his interest in the physical and conceptual process of reception though mixed media. He views his art as the evolution of process and subject. Leigh earned his B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2001. Leigh lives and works in San Francisco.

Klea McKenna is fascinated by the way in which ecological microcosms mirror human life.  With a hand-made camera McKenna photographs minute specimens in black and white and enlarges them to human scale.  She places people face to face with the natural world, which they take for granted in their everyday lives. McKenna studied photography at UCLA, UCSC, and Florence Art Institute. She earned her MFA from California College of the Arts in 2009.  McKenna lives and works in San Francisco.

Ben Needham uses landscape as a metaphor for memory.  His oil paintings present cross-sections of the earth, where he reveals that both land and memory are made up of layers containing evidence of various experiences. Needham received his B.A. in Studio Arts from Skidmore College in 1996. He studied at the Parsons School of Design in Paris and completed his M.F.A. in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2001.  Needham lives and works in New York.

Jackson Kyle Patterson explores his personal landscape by merging photos he has taken with photos found in family albums. Through photomontage he combines the new and the old to tell an original story and inspire the viewer’s imagination. Jackson received his B.A. at the University of Arizona in 1998 and his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2009. He was awarded first place in Paul Sack Building Award in 2009. Patterson lives and works in San Francisco.

Venue: Togonon Gallery is located at 77 Geary, 2nd Fl.

Gallery Hours: Tuesdays-Saturdays, 11-5:30 p.m.

Open till 8 pm on the1st Thursday of the month

Url: www. togonongallery.com

Vox: 415.398.5572

For more information, please contact Rafael Musni, Associate Gallery Director, 415.398.5572,·Email: rafael@togonongallery.com · url: togonongallery.com