Works by Helen S. Cohen, Sara Emsaki, Edith Hillinger & Tosha Stimage
Edith Hillinger, Death Valley Sunset 2, collage on canvas, 2013. Courtesy the artist.
Second Friday Opening Reception: July 8, 6 pm–9 pm
Artist Talk: Friday, August 12, 7 pm
Exhibition Dates: July 6–August 24
Where: K Gallery at Rhythmix Cultural Works, 2513 Blanding Ave., Alameda
Gallery Hours: Second Fridays 6 pm–9 pm, for events, and by appointment
Info: Email or 510.865.5060
The K Gallery at Rhythmix Cultural Works presents Figure & Field, a group exhibition of artists working in painting and collage to challenge the boundaries between foreground and background. Using varying degrees of representation and abstraction, each artist plays with formal qualities of space and depth as a strategy to engage questions of identity, culture, and physical and emotional place. From the deeply personal to the astutely political, works in the show coalesce to ask how much our sense of self comes from our bodies and how much from our surroundings.
About the Artists
Helen S. Cohen is a painter and award-winning documentary filmmaker whose work has been shown widely throughout the Bay Area and beyond. As a painter, her work explores different moods and states of mind through abstract imagery. She is drawn to simple forms, intrigued by the personality, volume and emotion they convey in various configurations. Cohen studied painting with Leigh Hyams, Fulbright scholar and founder of the Djerassi Resident Artist program in Woodside, California. She is represented by SFMOMA Artists Gallery.
Sara Emsaki is a recent graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, with a bachelor’s degree in art practice. She is the 2016 recipient of the Eisner Prize, awarded for the highest achievement in the creative arts, the 2015 Wendy Sussman Prize in Painting, and a 2015–2016 Honors Studio award. Born in Isfahan, Iran, Emsaki now lives and works in Oakland.
Edith Hillinger has been an artist for 70 years. Born in Berlin, Germany, she spent her formative years in Turkey and moved to the United States as a young adult. Her work has been shown in galleries and museums worldwide, including solo exhibitions at Togonon Gallery, San Francisco; Offramp Gallery, Pasadena, California; Larson Gallery, the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis and St. Paul; Aratoi Museum, Masterton, New Zealand; and Amerika Haus Gallery, Munich. Her work is in the collections of the Alameda County Arts Commission, the Jewish Museum, Berlin, and the Minnesota Museum of Art, among others. She lives and works in Berkeley.
Tosha Stimage is an interdisciplinary artist currently living and working in Berkeley. She holds a BFA from the Columbus College of Art & Design and an MFA from California College of the Arts. She is the recipient of the 2016 Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship and a 2015 Murphy Cadogan Scholarship. Stimage describes her practice as being at the intersection of “absolute narcissism and crippling self-doubt.” Her master’s thesis, Oeranjez, is available for purchase as a publication in the K Gallery.