KRISTI ENGLE GALLERY

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Kristi Engle Gallery
5002 York Ave.
Highland Park, CA 90042
323.472.6237
kristi@kristienglegallery.com

ART EXHIBITION: CARRIE WALKER'S “YOU MAY KNOW CARRIE FROM HER VIBRANT PRESENCE”

November 11 through December 23, 2006
Opening Reception: November 11, 2006, 6-9 pm
Artist Talk: November 16, 2006, 7 pm
Gallery hours: Thurs - Sat, 12 - 6pm & by appointment
For images, please contact: Kristi Engle, 323/472-6237

With the advent of blogs and social networking sites, identities have become invested in the Internet and the Internet has become invested in personal identities. Though most of these blogs and myspace profiles originate from their subjects, the Internet is crowded with images and information written or collected by someone other than their subject. Canadian artist, Carrie Walker explores the phenomenon of the collected/constructed self that these images and accompanying texts engender in her new series of works on paper, "You May Know Carrie From Her Vibrant Presence".

"Self-googling" is the practice of entering your own name into a search engine and seeing what comes up. Most of us have indulged in this time diversion at least once, out of curiosity, vanity or both. Walker's given name is particularly common (A search for "Carrie Walker" you will find over 12,000 hits. In contrast, searching for "Kristi Engle" receives approximately 3500 hits), so predictably, not all hits connected with a "Carrie Walker" search include Carrie Walker, the Canadian artist. These other Carrie Walkers began encroaching into WalkerÕs world as she received emails for Carries other than herself. The experience spawned an interest in these other women for Walker and she began painting and drawing their Internet images.

This scattered information gleaned from an Internet search reveals at best a partial and always highly mediated insight into its subject. It presents a greater "Carrie Walker" that can comprise all or some of these women at any given time. Using this conception, Walker manipulates the images to suit her own idea of self. In this way, Walker's intimate portraiture is, in a sense, a self-portrait. Yet the differences between this and classical portraiture are significant. With traditional self-portraiture, the artist has the ability to manipulate her own images to suit ideas of herself. A self-portrait is, in essence, how the artist wants us, the viewers to see her.

In these "self-portraits" Walker makes clear the inability of someone to control her own image. She accentuates this dilemma by enlarging the found images to life-size without correction for low resolution, making some of the images appear pixelated, and titling each work with a piece of text from the original source. Walker disallows the Carries (including herself as the show exhibits an actual self-portrait from images of the artist culled from the Internet) from controlling their own image.

Walker's work is an attempt to manage two seemingly disparate concepts: the technology that leads to the instant gratification of easily accessible information and the careful and sometimes tedious process of the classical artist's practice in portraiture. It engenders a self-realization that somehow intertwines the two.

In conjunction with Opening Reception, the Artist's Talk will take place on November 16, 2006 at 7:00 pm.

Kristi Engle Gallery devotes itself primarily to solo exhibitions of new works by contemporary artists. It is located in Highland Park, near the corner of Ave. 50 and York Blvd.

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