KLEA McKENNA
Rainbow Bruise
May 21 - August 6, 2022
Klea McKenna
Dig (1), 2022
Collage of hand painted photographic reliefs: unique embossed gelatin silver photograms, fabric dye, archival paste, rag paper, 59 x 45 in, frame: 60 x 46 in
“There is a game my kids and I play on our walks along the scrappy edges of our urban landscape. We pretend we are archeologists from the distant future looking for artifacts from the present. We wonder which relics of this moment will be left in our wake and how our descendants might interpret them. This question feels like a sanctuary. It’s a generous reminder of our impermanence and of how long time is and how small now is. In the wake of global crisis and personal trauma, I am increasingly aware of the ways in which we are already living among the ruins. The residue and marks of our lived experience build-up (or wear down) the surfaces around us and despite attempts to patch and layer over them, they are the substrate for the present.”
— Klea McKenna
Rainbow Bruise embraces the collapse that has marked our current moment reflecting an arc, both personal and collective, of fragmentation and erasure followed by glimmers of hopeful reinvention. McKenna’s signature photogram techniques are in full force in Rainbow Bruise, but they are now painted on, cut into and collaged back together. This work proposes a language of new forms that suggest speculative artifacts from a remarkable moment in history. In addition, a series of digital collages that recombine the artist’s analog photogram source material are displayed as a collection of NFTs in the gallery.
McKenna begins by collecting materials that bear the marks and stains that accumulate over time through growth, trauma, devotion and human touch, then, in darkness, she embosses these objects into photographic paper. Raking light is cast across the resulting textures in an unruly process that subverts photography’s intended use by making touch more primary than sight. The embossed photograms made by pressure and light contain a confounding blend of evidence and fiction. These ‘photographic reliefs’ then become the under-paintings onto which she applies layers of fabric dye, remaking the subjects on her own terms and in her own medium. In some cases, they are then collaged by hand or re-photographed and further hybridized into digital collages. In each of these final forms she employs humor, illusion, resourcefulness and play to make new artifacts that refer to the past, but point to an imagined future.
The imagery in Rainbow Bruise appears as thinly sliced cross-sections of a kaleidoscopic fossil record. Textural impressions of discarded antique paintings, scraps of clothing and local plants are sumptuously rendered in crisp black and white gradation. Shard-like shapes shatter themselves across the picture plane like spilled puzzle pieces awaiting reunification. Cool purples and warm rust tones appear–sometimes in dense pools, other times in loose washes, like the residue in salt flats or tide pools. The pictures invite prolonged inquiry about both the limits and possibilities of what the surface of an object can tell us.
Klea McKenna
Rainbow Bruise (21), 2022
Photographic relief: unique embossed gelatin
silver photogram, fabric dye, 23 x 19”
Klea McKenna
Rainbow Bruise (16), 2022
Photographic relief: unique embossed gelatin
silver photogram, fabric dye, 23 x 19”
Klea McKenna
Rainbow Bruise (11), 2021
Photographic relief: unique embossed gelatin
silver photogram, fabric dye, 23 x 19”
Klea McKenna
Rainbow Bruise (22), 2022
Photographic relief: unique embossed gelatin
silver photogram, fabric dye, 23 x 19”
Klea McKenna
Fossil Record (3), 2022
Collage of photographic reliefs: unique embossed gelatin silver photograms, fabric dye, 24 x 20”
Klea McKenna
Cave painting, 2021
Photographic relief: unique gelatin silver photogram, embossed impression of a
vintage painting, fabric dye, 42 x 36 in, frame: 45.25 x 38.5 in
Klea McKenna
Rainbow Bruise (7), 2021
Photographic relief: unique embossed gelatin
silver photogram, fabric dye, 23 x 19 in
Klea McKenna
Rainbow Bruise (19), 2021
Photographic relief: unique embossed gelatin
silver photogram, fabric dye, 23 x 19 in
Klea McKenna
Rainbow Bruise (17), 2021
Photographic relief: unique embossed gelatin
silver photogram, fabric dye, 23 x 19 in
“The title ‘Rainbow Bruise’ is a metaphor for post-traumatic growth; the unexpected transformation that can happen in the wake of trauma (personal or collective). I employ humor, play, resourcefulness and illusion to depict this arc of collapse, fragmentation and reinvention. Despite the heavy undertones, this work is actually really fun and playful.”
- Klea McKenna
Klea McKenna
Rainbow Bruise (13), 2021
Photographic relief: unique embossed gelatin
silver photogram, fabric dye, 23 x 19 in
Klea McKenna
Fossil Record (1), 2022
Collage of photographic reliefs: unique embossed gelatin silver photograms,
fabric dye, 42 x 36 in, frame: 45.25 x 39.25 in
Klea McKenna
Fossil Record (2), 2022
Collage of photographic reliefs: unique embossed gelatin silver photograms, fabric dye, rag paper, 24 x 20 in,
Klea McKenna
Blue Mirror, 2021
Photographic relief: unique gelatin silver photogram, embossed impression of a vintage oil painting, fabric dye, 50 x 41 in
Klea McKenna
Dig (2), 2022
Collage of photographic reliefs: unique embossed gelatin silver photograms,
fabric dye, rag paper, 40 x 26 in, frame: 41 x 26.75 in
Klea McKenna
Rainbow Bruise (6), 2021
Photographic relief: unique embossed gelatin
silver photogram, fabric dye, 23 x 19”
Klea McKenna
Rainbow Bruise (12), 2021
Photographic relief: unique embossed gelatin
silver photogram, fabric dye, 23 x 19 in
Klea McKenna
Rainbow Bruise (20), 2021
Photographic relief: unique embossed gelatin
silver photogram, fabric dye, 23 x 19 in
Klea McKenna
Rainbow Bruise (15), 2021
Photographic relief: unique embossed gelatin
silver photogram, fabric dye, 23 x 19 in
Klea McKenna
Rainbow Bruise (8), 2021
Photographic relief: unique embossed gelatin
silver photogram, fabric dye, 23 x 19 in
D I G I T I A L C O L L A G E S / N F T S
In her first collection of “digitally native” NFTs, McKenna composites her handmade, analog source material to make images that solely exist virtually. Like her physical artworks, they present dizzying, compacted layers within each image, but here the female body emerges more centrally as the subject, with a nod to the early human technologies that enabled the creation of effigies like the Venus of Willendorf. However, McKenna’s icons are based on discarded artifacts of our era: the shapes of unfolded boxes and the packaging of consumer goods, which (through slight manipulation) resemble hands, nipples and vulvas. They reflect the artist’s experience of “mothering through the soft-apocalypse” and appear at once irreverent and sacred. yet another human paradox for our descendants to decipher.
Klea McKenna
Rainbow Bruise #1 (The Glove)
NFT of a digital collage of hand painted, analog photographic reliefs
and photograms, fabric dye, shadows, 3000 x 2400 pixels
Klea McKenna
Rainbow Bruise #3 (Welcome)
NFT of a digital collage of hand painted, analog photographic reliefs
and photograms, fabric dye, shadows, 3000 x 2400 pixels
Klea McKenna
Rainbow Bruise #10 (Survival)
NFT of a digital collage of hand painted, analog photographic reliefs
and photograms, fabric dye, shadows, 3000 x 2400 pixels
Klea McKenna
Rainbow Bruise #17 (Both Sides)
NFT of a digital collage of hand painted, analog photographic reliefs
and photograms, fabric dye, shadows, 3000 x 2400 pixels
