Resident Artist

Karl Erickson

Field Projects is pleased to announce Karl Erickson as our inaugural Resident Artist. The goal of the Field Projects Residency Program is to work with one artist over the course of a year on a cohesive exhibition or series of projects relating to their work.  The Residency Program will focus on one artist or curator per year who has exhibited exemplary work in the field.  The resident will also work directly with the Field Projects team and the gallery as a whole on fresh ideas for the space and in an administrative capacity. 

We selected Karl Erickson to be our first artist in residence for his unique blend of experience as an artist, curator, and administrator for visual arts organizations including The Dumbo Arts Center and the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art. As the Resident Artist, Erickson is developing a series of of works for exhibition in the winter of 2015. Field Projects will explore the artists creative process throughout the year with a series of interviews, progress reports and image essays, that will appear on the website. Erickson will also be involved the administrative functions of the gallery, offering his years experience as an arts administrator to further the mission of Field Projects.

Karl Erickson makes art that moves toward an ecstatic utopian ideal by creating experiences of confusion and separation from conventional modes of seeing. He believes that through this estrangement our thinking can be rearranged and reprogrammed so that an understanding can be reached for what is needed for humankind to be ready for a new stage of cultural, biological and psychological evolution. His primary media are video, posters, collage and performance. Artistic interests focus on motivational language, transcendental experiences, science-fiction, repetition and counter-cultures. 

In 2013 he was an artist in residence at The Arctic Circle and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Swing Space Residency on Governor’s Island. Recent exhibitions include Monotonic Surfaces: An Account of the Arctic Regions” at Center for Strategic Art and Agriculture, “Andrew Falkowski and and Karl Erickson: Architecture and Morality” at the Suburban, Oak Park, IL, and “A Study in Midwestern Appropriation” at the Hyde Park Art Center, curated by Michelle Grabner.His videos have been in recent screenings as part of “Out to See” at New York’s South Street Sea Port, at Creon Gallery in New York and Parsons Hall Project Space in Holyoke, MA. He has latest performance art works have taken place at Apexart, Kunsthalle Galapagos and Winter Shack (with Eric Lindley). He collaborates frequently with Andrew Falkowski on visual disorientating installations and Robby Herbst and Steve Anderson to present live light-show events. Recently he has taken on music video commissions, collaborating with bands such as Cold Blood Club, Gold Paint and Careful. 

Erickson has curated exhibitions and projects at Torrance Art Museum, Dumbo Arts Center, Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions and other venues. With Leo Kuelbs, he has organized several traveling video exhibitions that have appeared in Los Angles, Brooklyn, Germany and Budapest. Erickson is currently working on a multi-part project titled “We Could Be Transcendent Apes.” He received his MFA from California Institute of the Arts and his BFA from Wayne State University, Detroit, MI.

Website: http://www.karlhugoerickson.com/
Twitter: twitter.com/KarlHErickson