Carla Gannis: Garden of Emoji Delights

Kasia Kay Art Projects is proud to announce the opening of Carla Gannis’s third solo exhibition with the gallery, entitled: Garden of Emoji Delights.

The exhibition is an installation of a large scale triptych, which comprises digitally collaged emoji symbols and animated characters into Hieronymus Bosch’s painting The Garden of Earthly Delights, (1500-1505), along with a small 3-D printed sculpture entitled " Escape Pod", a collaboration between Gannis and Everett Kane that explores the theatrical poetries of the modern domicile.

In an essay accompanying The Garden of Emoji Delights titled ‘Digicalyptic Realities, or The Frolic of the Flat’, curator Sabin Bors claims that this is arguably one of the most relevant digital works in recent years. While discussing digital symbology in its relation to Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, the relation between Emoji Delights and the works of other contemporary artists influenced by Bosch, or the place of Emoji Delights in the work of Carla Gannis, the author makes an interesting interpretation on the role of the digital in contemporary society and the passage from culture to civilization.

For all its technological infrastructure, the digitalization of communication is seen as a means to disseminate an increasingly analogical content that bears more emotional charge and agency. Sabin Bors argues, however, that to understand The Garden of Emoji Delights, we must understand the type of culture these images and their power belong to, the technological codifications of today’s language, and the relation between expressions and consumer culture.

Acknowledgements: Rafia Olufemi Santana, Studio Assistant

Accompanying Events: On October 31st, TRANSFER Gallery, Brooklyn, NY will present a special one-night screening event in conjunction with Gannis’s solo show at Kasia Kay Gallery. The full-scale reproduction of the original will be revealed in its digital format. The screening event will be accompanied by an Emoji Costume Ball on Halloween Night.

Artist Bio: Carla Gannis lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions both nationally and internationally. Gannis is the recipient of several awards and her work has been featured or reviewed in The Huffington Post, Wired, Art F City, Hyperallergic, The Wallstreet Journal, & The New York Times, among others. Most recently she collaborated with poet Justin Petropoulos on a transmedia book, installation and net art project entitled legend legend (Jaded Ibis Press and Transfer Gallery, 2013).
She is faculty and Assistant Chair of the Department of Digital Arts at Pratt Institute.

Carla Gannis is represented by Kasia Kay Art projects Gallery in Chicago and by Transfer Gallery in Brooklyn.