Exhibitions

Coveted.

February 13 - April 4, 2021   [Reservations Required]
​Laura Mulvey, Scholar, and Filmmaker introduced the term "the male gaze" in her 1975 essay. The male gaze represents the perspective of a heterosexual male viewer, along with the perspective of the heterosexual male character and the heterosexual male creator of the film. The male gaze also primarily depicts women as sexual objects for the sole pleasure of the male viewer.

While representations of the male gaze can be found in abundance when exploring themes of love, relationships, and desires, Coveted features works that offer a range of perspectives that are not easily accessible in mainstream culture. Featured works by Stefani Byrd (Fayetteville, AR), Dani Clauson (Portland, OR), Leiyana Gonzales (Cleveland, OH), Sydney Kleinrock (Long Island, NY), Megan Lubey (Cleveland, OH), Olga Nazarenko (Cleveland, OH), and Rebecca Poarch (Long Island, NY).
Read Artist Bios

Stefani Byrd

​Stefani Byrd’s art practice includes video, new media, and interactive technologies. Byrd’s early work addressed social justice issues in the form of interactive temporary public art installations that created role reversal, or "empathy training,” experiences for the audience. Her current work focuses on creating psychologically charged immersive media environments addressing topics such as digital feminism, gun
violence, and how technology impacts empathy in digitally mediated spaces.

Her work has been exhibited at places such as the CICA Museum (South Korea), the Museum of Contemporary Art of San Diego (San Diego), the Athens Institute for Contemporary Art, Atlanta Film Festival, and the Hunter Museum of American Art. She has received grants and support from groups such as: Creative Capital of New York, Flux Projects, Atlanta Celebrates Photography, and Idea Capital. Byrd's work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia and the Columbus Museum of American Art.

​She received her BFA degree in Photography from Georgia State University. She holds a Masters Degree in Visual Art from the University of California San Diego. Byrd is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Arkansas.

Dani Clauson

​Dani Clauson is a queer trans/non-binary ceramics artist, who has been utilizing art as a mode of ‘speaking’ since they were a child. Dani utilizes their past experiences of domestic memories, trauma, and relationships to influence their work. They found clay as a freshman attending the University Of Montana, and have been touched by the materials empathy, reciprocation, and bodily metaphor ever since. Clay has been crucial to healing and expressing their struggle with bodily connection and sense of safety. From the University of Washington they have received a BA with honors in 3D4M, alongside a minor in Art History. They utilize their art history education to strengthen their art objects to speak upon the history of violence against the Feminine and its effects upon queer identity and gender.

Leiyana Gonzales

Leiyana Gonzales is an interdisciplinary digital artist based in Cleveland, Ohio. Her work is rooted in the details and emphasizes saturated, vibrant colors that dance across your mind. Leiyana focuses on creating pieces that effortlessly portray familiarity while embodying otherworldly elements. She has been creating on digital platforms since 2018, after spending her early life sketching and painting with graphite and acrylic mediums. Her work intends to inspire her audience to see magic in the mundane and transport them into another world. ​

Sydney Kleinrock

Sydney Kleinrock is a painter and textile artist born in Long Island, New York. She received her Associates Degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology, and graduated in 2018 with a BFA from Hampshire College, studying visual arts and sustainability. In her last year at school, she exhibited a gallery show of her thesis artwork which examined the role of clothing in everyday life as well as its larger, cross-cultural impact on the global environment. Recently, she has done a residency at the Vermont Studio Center, and shown work at the Untitled Space in tribeca. She currently works out of her studio in Greenfield, MA.

Megan Lubey

Originally from Buffalo, NY, Megan Lubey is a young artist currently studying painting and creative writing at the Cleveland Institute of Art. Her work often explores unconventional, ‘crafty’ media and how it interacts with more traditional aspects of painting. Lubey’s paintings range from observational to non-objective, repeatedly incorporating unexpected saturation of color and gestural expression. Her work considers themes such as comfort, domesticity, girlhood, shame, and sexuality. These pieces tend to reflect on personal experiences and their ability to resonate within others when stripped down to their core emotions or when evoking a visceral feeling.

Olga Nazarenko

Olga Nazarenko is a Russian-American interdisciplinary mixed media artist currently based in Cleveland. Nazarenko documents the transience of experience through a sensorial and culturally-guided lens. Nazarenko uses a variety of visual, auditory, and tactile artistic mediums to shape works that comment on the narratives that shape human identity, the relationship between humans and nature, and the rituals that connect humans to the divine.

Since 2019, Nazarenko has been experimenting with mediums that liberate and engage the senses. As a filmmaker, Nazarenko uses sensory ethnography and experimental documentary styles to shape new forms of visual communication and to explore human
sense-making. In addition to analog and digital film and audio as mediums, Nazarenko uses three-dimensional materials to create physical objects that tell a story or comment on cultural customs. By using cement sculpture and ceramics, Nazarenko shapes forms that allow audiences to relate to the world as a child does, with a free and exploratory mind. By connecting the intuitive world of the three-dimensional with the visual narratives of the two-dimensional, Nazarenko suggests new ways to view our realities and the narratives we build in our own lives.

Rebecca Poarch

Rebecca Poarch is a 22-year-old artist from Long Island, New York. She recently graduated  from the Pennsylvania State University after pursing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art with  her concentration in Painting & Drawing. Rebecca was awarded the 2019 Margaret Giffen  Schoenfelder Memorial Scholarship by Penn State School of Visual Arts to recognize her as an  exceptional forth-year painter. Rebecca has shown at Greenpoint Gallery in Brooklyn, New  York, Radiator Gallery in Queens, New York, and with the Garment District Alliance in New  York, New York. Rebecca has worked as a Curatorial Assistant at Isabella Garrucho Fine Art in  Greenwich, Connecticut and as a Curatorial Assistant at the Art Alliance of Central Pennsylvania  in State College, Pennsylvania.

DomesticLands

April 9 - June 6, 2021
The home is a place that fosters our understanding of relationships. During the early years of childhood is when we develop socially and emotionally. Later in life, these early years will impact our ability to foster relationships, empathize, and how to interact with others. When revisiting memories of home, it is important to teeter on the edge of both joy and trauma as this duality defines us. There are nurturing memories that offer safety and warmth. However, for others, the home can represent pain where a moment of trauma is forever encased in time. Home can be a physical location, associated with the material, or defined within one's self.  This cultivation of objects and relationships defines who we are.    

Presenting works by Morgan Bukovec, Gary Sczerbaniewicz, and Allison M. Walters.
Artist Statements & Bios

Morgan Bukovec

Morgan Bukovec's work is rooted in community, connection, and storytelling. 

In her practice, Morgan knows when a collage is complete when she sees a story unraveling before her eyes and there is an immediate sense of connection between materials. Each of the materials she uses are found, have an ephemeral quality, and hold a story of their own. Morgan's work is important to share because it connects to the human experience. Her works are filled with opportunities for viewers to look close at the materials used, examine the story that was delicately created, then reflect on one’s own memory, story, and moments of connection
Morgan Bukovec​ is a mixed media maker, educator, storyteller and collector of things from Cleveland, Ohio. Having recently received a bachelor's degree in Fine Art and Art Education from the University of Dayton, her studio practice is interdisciplinary with a 
focus on the themes: identity, storytelling, fleeting moments and objects across time. Recent group exhibitions include: Waterloo Arts Juried Exhibition and Intern Exhibition at Spaces Gallery in Cleveland, Ohio; We Want As Much, Politits Art Coalition; and Finding Calm While We Wait, Doug + Laurie Kanyer Art Collection. Morgan works at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland as a Thoma Engagement Guide Apprentice and part-time educator, while creating narrative-based art work in her home studio. Morgan finds joy in storytelling, learning, and collecting ephemeral things.

Gary Sczerbaniewicz 

My approach to the concept of Home is to document the unheimlich or un-homely. This contrarian position has been gleaned from numerous experiences in which the safety, security, and intimacy normally associated with the concept of home has been subverted or dismantled (often by intangible forces), yielding spaces which are mere remnants of their once vigorous nature. Growing up at the end of the Cold War in suburban New York State in a Catholic family- my childhood was generally happy but always laced with a sense of existential dread from invisible sources ranging from spiritual retribution to literal annihilation by radioactive cloud. The resulting effect of this struggle between security/ insecurity has impacted my thinking, research, and practice to yield a permanent sense of what scholar Ruth Ronen describes as an ‘aesthetics of anxiety’. These four works comprise the first part in a series of eight which depict related wall sections of an old domestic space that have been ruptured by some unknown trauma. This trauma is perhaps hinted at in the acronym titles which refer to a Catholic nighttime prayer recited often in my childhood: *'(NILM) Now I Lay Me...... (DTS) Down To Sleep'…..(IPTL) I Pray The Lord…..(MSTK) My Soul To Keep.’
Gary Sczerbaniewicz​ was born in Upstate NY, received his BFA in Sculpture from Alfred University and his MFA in Sculpture & Installation from the University at Buffalo in 2013. Sczerbaniewicz is a 2016 NYFA fellow in Architecture/ Environmental Structures / Design from the New York Foundation for the Arts. He has exhibited both nationally and internationally and has completed residencies at Yaddo (2017), the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts (2016), and Sculpture Space (2013). Sczerbaniewicz recently served as Visiting Assistant Professor of Sculpture at the University of Notre Dame. Gary is represented by Anna Kaplan Contemporary, Buffalo, NY. 

Allison Walters

I'm a person who makes things and loves people. My work deals with what it means to be human, with what it means to be imperfect. I study the imperfection within myself, and I broadcast that into the world so that others may relate and feel closer to me and to one another, as imperfect human beings. I am most interested in communication between humans, and the failure of that communication. What happens when we love too much, and our feelings become warped or perverted? What happens when we want to get close, but we cannot? I deal with emptiness, fullness, lust, love, and abuse. I am interested in happiness, and subsequently images, text, and ideas that are connected to happiness, especially ones that have been deprived of context or emotion. Ultimately, I want to share feelings with people.
Allison Walters is a person who makes art. She works in photography, painting, video, digital art, and conceptual art. Her work deals with being human and sharing complex feelings with others. She has an MFA from Stony Brook University, where she studied Studio Art from 2014–2017. She also works as a web and graphic designer at the College Art Association, a nonprofit arts organization based in New York City.

Derick Whitson's Sugar (Chapter ii)

June 12 - August 8, 2021
On June 12, Kaiser Gallery presents Derick Whitson’s SUGAR (Chapter II). Derick Whitson (b. 1991 Mansfield, Ohio) is an artist currently living and working in NYC. Working primarily in photography and video, Whitson explores the history and relationships of clowning, drag queens and black/white face to explore the social constructs of race, gender, and sexuality.

Whitson has attended artist residencies at AICAD New York Studio Residency program, NY, Mass MoCA, Massachusetts, The Fountainhead, Miami, FL, and The Galveston Artist Residency. His work has recently been exhibited at Art Basel, Miami, FL, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and The Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins, CO. He received his MFA at Columbia University.
Read Whitson's Bio and Artist Statement

Derick Whitson

Derick Whitson (b. 1991, Mansfield, Ohio) lives & works in New York City. Earned his MFA at Columbia University & BFA from Columbus College of Art & Design. Working within the realms of Photography, Video & Performance. Whitson’s work has been published in Miami New Times, Huffington Post, The Advocate Magazine, & Photo-Emphasis. Whitson has participated in many residencies across the U.S., including programs at Mass MoCA, The Fountainhead (Miami), and the AICAD/New York Studio Residency Program. Whitson is also a current recipient of the Foundation For Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, the 2019 Enfoco Photography Fellowship, & The 2019 NYSCA/NYFA Photography Fellowship.

Artist Statment

This is your Ego: Words, two words, made up of two words. I’ve waited on the smell of beef stew and the taste of the burned garlic that sizzles the throat. My throat has held tension, it could be the tightness from allergies or the 3 legged dog pose that has become impossible to comfortably release. I’ve found moments of silence, maybe only two, but the background noise of television, irritates my thoughts on the search for a job that will convert me into a citizen. Theres been no quench of my thirst, theres no physical metaphor or reason to continue slurping orange juice. My belly is bloated, it’s beyond the american cheese and meat lovers pizza. The anxiety holds tight onto the gas that introduces itself to my neighbors. Maybe I waited for this? Waited to find that my true lover is longing and the potential, to make believe and form surrealist dreams that remind me of the bones in my sleeves. I have two treasure chests, one in my pores and the other in the sheets when I allow one sock to go because of a fungus thats beneath one curled toe. I had a dream of painting, navigating color relationships on a canvas. I also dreamed of riding my bicycle down a hill that was so steep I could barely break. Ellen is the name, she’s my divination tarot card reader. I’ve never seen her, I’ve never spoken to her, but she reveals a path. Sometimes I hear my own thoughts like a bell, the bell from the toaster oven that invented itself? Is it really true that I could be a combination of everything and every one else, am I made up of other peoples thoughts. There’s something to the color mint green, the green influences my sickness, almost like a tooth decaying in response to a mint chocolate chip ice cream cone. I’ve loved once before, he was kind, gentle, sweet, the production of him happened in my dreams. I’ve thought about my dreams once before, they told me theres something to the color yellow, they said it’s like a stench in the air that’s only tainted by the sun. Running doesn’t get me high, it only forces me to create a amount of sympathy, sympathy for my insecurities. I’ve seen this chevron pattern once before, it follows the stripes that mask themselves in red & white, but this time in cotton. Cotton has become a symbol, I’m not sure of what, maybe it’s the mucus that drowned itself in my skin. A rose also carries it’s own symbol, and I don’t mean a projected symbol that signifies the artificial lighting from Christmas lights. I’ve learned two things about breathing, only one represents life. Calvin, what a lovely name, is that because it’s attached to my suit case, or my white underwear that rises in my shorts. I’ve found solace in my longing, time in my heart beat, and a tremor in my waken state. Lets hope my ego has found peace also. ​

The Weight of Time

​August 14 - October 10, 2021

​An exhibition that explores the social and economic effects from government quarantine orders, as a direct result, of the novel virus COVID-19. We invite artists to submit their introspective works that examine the solitude of quarantining during the global pandemic and the shutdown's lasting effects on vulnerable populations. The global pandemic and the shutdowns that followed created new challenges for various people in different ways while further exposing broken government infrastructure and community ramifications for a world that was not prepared to stop. ​