PRESS RELEASE - Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art
Boulder, CO May 2008
Carla Gannis's Jezebels rail at the mythology, history and stereotypes that have shaped and defined femininity within our collective unconsciousness for many generations. This archetype is not a single woman but a compilation of multidimensional characters playing in turn the nonconformist, social beauty, revolutionary, wanton sex goddess, victim and superhero. Using appropriated iconography from classic film noir, pivotal events in Feminist history, surrealist dreams and pop culture as vehicles for her nonlinear narratives, Gannis weaves the past, present and future in each of these large scale new media works of art.
The Artist's method of working pushes forward what has been recently termed "digital painting," refining and personalizing the process to make it uniquely her own. Gannis begins with a story board for each work, creating a concept which weaves together references from cinematic, literary, and art historical interpretations of "the wanton woman", and then recontextualizes them into a new tableaux in which her characters convey strength, intelligence, beauty and complexity. Next she shoots photographs that will be used as the "stage" for the character, which she then collages with appropriated film stills in Photoshop. Finally, the Artist goes over every centimeter of these newly combined images with many layers of digital painting, creating a truly unique visual language.
Gannis exhibition "Jezebel" features six large scale digital prints, each with a coinciding predella. Created in the 14th century to illustrate the life of a saint, these horizontal panels were originally attached to the lower edge of an altarpiece as a narrative for the larger panel above them. Gannis adopted this vehicle to give context to Jezebel's historic and cultural currency, updating them to resemble a film strip which hangs below each major panel. Her subject is always dressed in red, not only as a signifier of lust and sexuality but as an expression of revolution, anger and courage.
"The agenda of a woman making art today should be as complex and mysterious as the work itself," says Gannis. "Jezebel is a person conflicted and flawed yet forward thinking and courageous. Although I feel there is a feminist bent to this body of work, my hope is that it rises above any kind of 'exclusive' interpretation and takes into account a love for cinema and fascination with the history of narrative form and its new possibilities as expressed through my digital media collage."
Carla Gannis, originally from North Carolina, currently lives and works in New York. Trained as a painter and having received her BFA from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro and her MFA from Boston University, Gannis shifted to producing digital print and multi-media installation work in the late 1990's.
Gannis is the recipient of several awards, including a 2005 New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Grant in Computer Arts, an Emerge 7 Fellowship from the Aljira Art Center, and a Chashama AREA Visual Arts Studio Award in New York, NY. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions both nationally and internationally. Her most recent solo exhibitions include Jezebel at Claire Oliver Gallery in New York, Everything That Rises Must Converge at Kasia Kay Art Projects Gallery in Chicago, Il, Jezebel presented by Claire Oliver Gallery at Loop Video Art Fair, Barcelona, Spain; and I Dream of Jeannie Emerging from a Fresca Bottle at Christa Schuebbe Galerie, Dusseldorf, Germany.
Features on Gannis's work have appeared in Res Magazine, Animal Magazine, 11211, and Collezioni Edge, and her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The LA Times, The Miami Herald, NY Arts Magazine, The Daily News, The Star Ledger, and The Village Voice. She is currently on the Digital Arts teaching faculty at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and The School of Visual Arts in New York.
PRESS RELEASE - TZR GALERIE Kai Brückner
Düsseldorf, April 8th 2008
Exhibition: Carla Gannis – Jezebel inside
Opening: Friday, April 11th, 6 – 9 pm
Duration: April 11th – 31. May 31st 2008
On April 11th 2008 the exhibition “Jezebel inside“ by the American artist Carla Gannis will open at the TZR Galerie Kai Brückner. Gannis' work deals with the female archetype Jezebel - a figure of the old testament – one whoimplied for many centuries heathenism and lust. In modernity she is increasingly linked to nonconformity as for example the main character in the movies “Jezebel“ (1938) and “Gone with the Wind“ (1939). Today Jezebel is multidimensional: a brave rebel, seductress, feminist icon who has been given form in literature, film, and musical interpretations.
In Gannis´ large-scale “new media“ artworks she re-invents different aspects of the Jezebel persona via digital collage. A multitude of complex characters is unified in her representations: the nonconformist, the beauty, the rebel, the sex goddess, the victim (bondwoman, slave) and the super hero. Gannis lifts her figures on a newly-created stage from where they radiate strength, intelligence and complexity. They now triumph over mythology, history and stereotypes which have formed and defined in the collective subconsciousness the term of femaleness for generations. Her main characters wear red – just as the historic example, not only as a signifier of lust and sexuality, but as an expression of courage and revolution in resistance of the cliché.
The exhibition comprises large-scaled digital prints, a wall installation, a life-size silhouette, a PHSCologram created in collaboration with (art)n*, and an interactive digital game work which can be experienced on the website of the gallery as well as in the gallery itself. In her artwork Gannis expresses her contemporary re-interpretation of the Jezebel-myth through image and metaphor. In the context of the digital age the interpretation of this topic, with the help of computer-based techniques, is only logical and consequent.
* 
was formed in 1983 by Ellen Sandor and her peers at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Since then, it has evolved into an international, interdisciplinary collective of artists, scientists, and engineers whose works have been collected by institutions and individuals worldwide. (art)n's portfolio is exceptionally wide-ranging, including PHSColographic renditions of iconic works by the Chicago Imagists; site-specific, visual history installations; biology-based works; and everything in between.
Ellen Sandor and (art)n's patented invention, the PHSCologram is an acronym for photography, holography, sculpture and computer graphics. The PHSCologram imagery is digitally sculpted, lit, rendered, and captured at as many as 64 slightly different positions across a horizontal plane with a 3-D software application. Then the frames are
woven into an interleave with (art)n's proprietary art program for a final output to transparent film. (art)n's software generates a matching linescreen that allows our eyes to interpret the final backlit photograph as a three-dimensional sculpture.
PRESS RELEASE – Claire Oliver Gallery
March 22, 2007
Jezebel
Carla Gannis' Jezebels rail at the mythology, history and stereotypes that have shaped and defined femininity within our collective unconsciousness for many generations. This archetype is not a single woman but a compilation of multidimensional characters playing in turn the nonconformist, social beauty, revolutionary, wanton sex goddess, victim and superhero. Using appropriated iconography from classic film noir, pivotal events in Feminist history, surrealist dreams and pop culture as vehicles for her nonlinear narratives, Gannis weaves the past, present and future in each of these large scale new media works of art.
The Artist's method of working pushes forward what has been recently termed "digital painting", refining and personalizing the process to make it uniquely her own. Gannis begins with a story board for each work, creating a concept which weaves together references from cinematic, literary, and art historical interpretations of “the wanton woman”, and then recontextualizes them into a new tableaux in which her characters convey strength, intelligence, beauty and complexity. Next she shoots photographs that will be used as the "stage" for the character, which she then collages with appropriated film stills in Photoshop. Finally, the Artist goes over every centimeter of these newly combined images with many layers of digital painting, creating a truly unique visual language.
Gannis exhibition "Jezebel" features six large scale digital prints, each with a coinciding predella. Created in the 14th century to illustrate the life of a saint, these horizontal panels were originally attached to the lower edge of an altarpiece as a narrative for the larger panel above them. Gannis adopted this vehicle to give context to Jezebel's historic and cultural currency, updating them to resemble a film strip which hangs below
each major panel. Her subject is always dressed in red, not only as a signifier of lust and sexuality but as an expression of revolution, anger and courage.
"The agenda of a woman making art today should be as complex and mysterious as the work itself," says
Gannis. "Jezebel is a person conflicted and flawed yet forward thinking and courageous. Although I feel there is a feminist bent to this body of work, my hope is that it rises above any kind of ‘exclusive’ interpretation and takes into account a love for cinema and fascination with the history of narrative form and its new possibilities as expressed through my digital media collage."
