Friday October 5, 7:30pm
Finnish Cultural Institute of New York: P2P Review
featuring Keren Benbenisty, Rita Jokiranta, Ellen Kozak
Artists in Person
Still from “Thinking of Yayi’s Son” (2011) by Rita Jokiranta. Image courtesy of the artist
Microscope Gallery is excited to feature a presentation of works by media artists Keren Benbenisty, Rita Jokiranta and Ellen Kozak as part of the P2P Review.
The screening series, organized by the Finnish Cultural Institute New York (FCINY), brings together diverse group of artists working with moving image and new media. Each public gathering focuses on showing key works from the invited artists, followed by a lively discussion on topics the works address.
The idea of these informal gatherings grew out of the desire of the FCINY’s international resident artists to get to know the work of their New York peers and to showcase their own. Hosted at rotating venues, the events are co-organized with a changing roster of New York galleries and residency programs. This P2P is realized in collaboration with the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York and The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts.
The selection of works by Benbenisty, Jokiranta and Kozak share an emphasis on the poetic quality of bodies of water while also addressing issues as diverse as memory, time, migration and the environment.
free admission
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Keren Benbenisty (b. Israel) moved to Paris in 1998, graduated from the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2004 and attended California Institute of the Arts (Cal’Arts) as an international exchange scholar with a fellowship of Colin – Lefranc Foundation. Benbenisty has been artist-in-residence at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine (2009) and received the Wallace-Reader’s Digest Endowment; ISCP – The International Studio & Curatorial Program (2011) funded by ARTIS, Ostrovsky Family Fund (OFF) and the Israeli consulate in New York; Residency Unlimited, New York (2016) with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts; Arts Maebashi, Japan (2017). She is currently at the Open Sessions Program at the Drawing Cener, New York. Recent exhibitions include The James Gallery, CUNY Graduate Center for Humanities in New York City; Tel-Aviv Museum of Art; Genia Schreiber University Gallery Tel Aviv; The Artist House in Jerusalem; Francesca Antonini Gallery in Rome and Human Resources in Los Angeles. Upcomig exhibition ; Arts Maebashi, Japan, Petach Tikva Museum, Israel, Soloway, Brookyn. In 2013, she won an award from the Shpilman Institute of Photography (SIP) for her first artist book –A A O UE – that was published by Sternthal Books. Keren Benbenisty is currently living and working in Manhattan and her studio is located at The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts.
Rita Jokiranta is a visual artist who utilizes both moving images and still photography in her practice. Her experimental multi-channel installations are especially representative of her recent productions. Her works have been shown in numerous contemporary art exhibitions, film festivals, and solo and group shows throughout Europe and the United States. She has also produced several public art commissions in Finland and Norway. Her latest multi-channel video installation, In the Minds of Others (2018), opens October 26th at Galleria Huuto, Helsinki. Jokiranta’s work is also included in Nordic Impressions, a major survey of Nordic art spanning nearly 200 years, which will open October 13th at The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. Rita Jokiranta lives and works between Mariehamn, the Åland Islands, Finland, and Stockholm, Sweden.
Ellen Kozak is a New York City-based video artist and painter . Her work was most recently exhibited this year in the solo show “riverthatflowsbothways” a 4-channel video installation at the Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY. Other institutional exhibitions include Osaka Contemporary Art Center, Osaka, Japan (solo); Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Art, Utsunomia, Japan (solo); Pratt University, Brooklyn, NY, and The Queens Museum of Art: Queens, NY, among others. Her works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC; the National Museum of American Art Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC; Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY and the Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Art and others. Kozak has long been fascinated with water, light and color. The physical presence of the river in her daily life has fostered a longstanding aesthetic engagement with the Hudson, a concern for all bodies of water, and ecological challenges. She was a founding member of Riverkeeper’s Leadership Council and currently serves on their Board of Directors. Ellen Kozak was born in Queens, NY. She studied at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT and the Massachusetts College of Art. As a CAVS fellow she participated in Documenta VI. She lived in lives in NYC and in New Baltimore, NY in the Hudson River Valley.
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Microscope Gallery Event Series 2018 is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC).