ThreeWalls announces: Marked by Joseph Kohnke June 2, 2006

ThreeWalls Presents:

Joseph Kohnke: Marked

OPENS: Friday, June 2nd, 6:00 - 9:00 PM
ON VIEW: June 2 - July 1, 2006

CHICAGO, IL - Chicago artist Joseph Kohnke creates fantastical sculpture, kinetic wonders that give life to the inanimate object. Kohnke has helped chip bags breathe, baptized wigs, caused a measuring tape to chirp like a hundred birds and played a singular operatic note with a combination of water, crystal and rubber. His sculptures allow everyday objects to be transformed into vehicles for communication, spiritual transmitters that are given voice for communication from the afterlife.

For Marked, Kohnke explores the surface of the body as the indicator of well-being. After a good friend died from melanoma, Kohnke was drawn to every skin imperfection on his own body. Intrigued that small imperfections on the dermis could consume one's entirety, Kohnke considered how markings on the skin can act both as camouflage, increasing chances of survival as well as harbingers of death.

The sculptural installation Marked acts as a mechanism devised to continuously search the skin for imperfections or threatening flaws. The information that is found is then translated and transferred to two isolated bodies, interpreting the pattern of our skin as a cipher for our very survival and a testament to vulnerability.

Joseph Kohnke received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2003 where he was the recipient of the Merit Scholarship in Art and Technology. He has exhibited in numerous group shows, including Klein Art Works, Chicago; One Quarterly Gallery, Chicago; The Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, Grand Rapids and Tokyo National University, Tokyo. Kohnke has upcoming solo exhibitions at North Eastern Illinois University (2006), the Chicago Cultural Center (2007) and Grunt Gallery, Vancouver (2006).

Official Website: http://www.three-walls.org