Art Form(s)
Film/Video, Installation, Painting, Sculpture, Other
Connect
https://www.shanakaplow.com
[email protected]
St. Paul
Artist Statement
Shana Kaplow’s artistic practice begins with the interconnection between the body, the space of the home, and the larger world. She considers the tensions found in everyday, mass-produced objects, implicating a world that is both intimate yet globally and economically bound together. In her work with ink paintings, wall installations, sculpture, and video, objects of comfort such as chairs, dining tables, and pillows degrade into dissolving forms and unstable arrangements. Her work evokes the idea of home but never quite seems to feel “at home”, suggesting a discomfort rooted in extractive networks of labor and production that often go unseen.
As the daughter of a physicist, Kaplow’s use of materials is informed by transitory states of matter that suggest unstable conditions. In her work, forces such as dissolution, evaporation, seepage, and imbalance become metaphors for unsustainable systems. These physical phenomena also reflect critical thresholds between diverse states, on the brink of transformation, offering the potential for change.
Twin Cities artist, Shana Kaplow has exhibited her work nationally and internationally at The Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Tianjin Museum of Art, Walker Art Center, The Asheville Museum of Art, The Soap Factory, Rosalux Gallery, 55 Mercer Gallery, Franklin Art Works, and Weinstein Gallery among others. She was awarded The Joan Mitchell Foundation Artists Grant for Painters and Sculptors, has been a McKnight Artist Fellow and a Bush Foundation Artist Fellow, and has received several MN State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grants. She was an artist in residence at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans, The Red Gate International Artist Residency in Beijing, China, and the Vermont Studio Center. Kaplow’s work was profiled on Twin Cities Public Television’s MN Original. She holds an MFA from The Maryland Institute, College of Art, a BA from Connecticut College, and was a Professor of 2D Media and Interdisciplinary Art at St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, MN. The artist's book, "Object Objects" is a thoughtful and poetic exploration of Kaplow's artistic practice, published in 2019, and includes texts by New Orleans writer, Veronica Kavass, and Minneapolis artist, Sarah Petersen.
