Bessie Kunath

Instagram: Bessie Konky

Website: http://www.bessiekunath.com

Bio: (b. 1981, Orange, CA.) Kunath acquired a Bachelor of Science in nursing from Drexel University and currently works as a nurse in Los Angeles. She holds an M.F.A. in Studio Art from University of California Santa Barbara, and a B.A. in Art and an MA in Education from the University of San Francisco. Kunath has participated in exhibitions in San Francisco, Oakland, Orange County, CA, Los Angeles, New York, Ohio, Finland, Salt Lake City, and Tokyo. She has worked in the arts since 2003 and is a founding member of LA-based curatorial collective, Manual History Machines.

Statement: They are performing bodies. Their meaning is fragile. Value is imposed. Function is obscured. These are the basic assumptions I have when considering my reference materials, most of which are found, salvaged or repurposed. I find personal value in responding to objects and images. Through this process, I show that I care for them and will meaning back into their tender body. As a nurse and a mother, I respond to what is needed through an experience that is mutually humbling. In my nurse role, my patients, are in a sense, strangers, and I gain a sense of intimacy with them by tending to them. With regards to my painting and sculptural work, there is a sense of intimacy through the experience of touching, gazing upon, handling, manipulating and living with an object or image. My recent work deliberates on objects or images that I have uncovered on Craigslist or local thrift stores as well as mined materials from my own studio practice. In the pieces entitled "Magic Mountain [photo]" and “Magic Mountain [painting]”, I include a reference image of Isamu Noguchi's 1984 sculpture of the same name. A photocopy of Noguchi’s piece is obscured by other pieces of cut paper. The meaning of Noguchi’s work is distilled amid its recognizability as an existing artwork. It is democratically cast into the same pile of paper scraps and bits of other reference material, suspended in a sort of purgatory as they wait to either be discarded or regarded once again.