Tanja Geis
Cumulations
April 14–May 7, 2023
Artist's Reception: Friday April 28, 5–7pm
Syringe, 2021. Acrylic gouache on paper, plastic flotsam found on shoreline
of San Francisco Bay, 22" x 30" Artist's Statement
Tanja Geis makes research-based paintings, drawings, sculptures and videos that invite intimacy with human-disturbed marine and coastal ecosystems through queering, drawing close to and staying with the impacts of humans on the liveliness of non-humans. She is guided by the question of how we can learn to live with some measure of grace in these ruins of our own creation. In Invocation CA, 2023, Geis collected individual recordings of friends and acquaintances in California making the sound of the ocean with their voices. She combined these tracks into a single sound piece that presents a California-specific collective imaginary of the ocean, filtered through the consciousnesses and vocalizations of people living in the region. The works in Surface Tension were made using flotsam gathered from San Francisco Bay as printing implements. Through systematic repetition each print, much like a portrait, reveals the specific character of the item used to make it, while also referencing the ever-shifting pattern of water movement in the Bay. Bio Tanja Geis holds a Masters of Fine Art in Art Practice from University of California Berkeley, a Masters in Resource Management in Marine Management from the University of Akureyri, Iceland, and a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art from Yale University. She has been exhibited at the Berkeley Art Museum, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, and galleries in Iceland, Scotland, England, Hong Kong and Japan. Geis' awards include a Graduate Fellowship and Affiliate Artist Fellowships at the Headlands Center for the Arts, a Murphy and Cadogan Contemporary Art Award from The San Francisco Foundation, and a Graduate Arts Grant from the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts. She has been an artist-in-residence at Djerassi Resident Artist Program, the Blue Mountain Center and Kala Art Institute. Geis was born in Hong Kong and lives in Berkeley, CA. Artist's website |