1805 Gallery is pleased to announce the upcoming Artist in Residence Katie Ruiz. The San Diego based multimedia artist will be working in the gallery from April 15, 2019 through May 30, 2019. On May 30, 2019, from 6-9PM, 1805 Gallery will host an artist reception to celebrate the completion of the residency and the opening of Ruiz’s exhibition Xicana on view from May 30, 2019 through June 22, 2019.

While in residence, Katie Ruiz will create a series of paintings that depict figurative forms engaging with brightly colored geometric shapes and patterns inspired by the Otomi tribes of Central Mexico. Otomi textiles are well known in the Central Valley of Mexico for their intricately embroidered clothing and blankets that depict abstract animals and plants. Identifying herself as a Chicana artist, Ruiz relates her experience growing up in the desert landscape of Arizona to the imagery of the semi-desert origins of the Otomi people. Like the Otomi culture, Ruiz embraces elements of the natural world in her artwork, painting fictional mountain ranges and pathways for coupled figures veiled in decorative blankets. As the Otomi people thrive off the global sales of their vibrant textiles, Ruiz emphasizes the blanket as a significant symbol of unification and celebrates its potential to transcend diverse individuals and cultures.

“Blankets are something we use to keep us warm. We use them to keep us safe, to warm our children, to bury our loved ones. We use them to play, to make tents, and for aesthetic purposes. Blankets are full of stories, history, secrets and special moments. Sharing a blanket is sharing intimacy. My work is about the narrative of that connection.” - Katie Ruiz

Katie Ruiz holds a Masters degree of Fine Art from The New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting & Sculpture in NYC and a Bachelors Degree of Fine Art from Northern Arizona University. Ruiz received the Hohenburg Travel Scholarship in 2017 and Mac Conner Scholarship LCU in 2014.

EVERY FRAGMENT • A PRAYER: YASMINE K. KASEM

ARTIST IN RESIDENCE: DECEMBER 21, 2018 - JANUARY 19, 2019 

EXHIBITION: JANUARY 24, 2019 - FEBRUARY 23, 2019 

ARTIST RECEPTION: THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 2019, 6-8PM 

1805 Gallery is thrilled to present Every Fragment • A Prayer: Yasmine K. Kasem. Yasmine Kasem will complete a residency at 1805 Gallery from December 21, 2018 through January 19, 2019 followed by an exhibition of works created while on site. The exhibition will run from January 24, 2019 through February 23, 2019. An artist reception will be held at 1805 Gallery on January 24, 2019 from 6-8PM located at 1805 Columbia Street. This event is free and open to the public.

While in residence, Kasem will tear cotton piping into strands, weaving them together to form Islamic prayer rugs that will be saturated with fabric dyes and transferred onto sheets of paper. As an Egyptian-American artist Kasem explores elements of her layered identity within her practice closely examining the struggle in merging her Islamic religion and untraditional lifestyle, and her submission to accept both as a unified identity. The transfer of pigments and cotton from the saturated prayer rugs materializes the tension inherent of her religious and sexual identity.

“In this act, I consider the space a prayer rug creates for me as a Muslim and an individual; the spiritual space of serenity. I wish to grow that personal space, fragmenting it into several pieces, expanding the peace within me that can exist in the meter of internal oppositional forces.” - Yasmine Kasem

Yasmine K. Kasem is a San Diego based artist that received her Bachelors of Fine Art from Herron School of Art and Design in 2015 and is currently a candidate for a Masters in Fine Art from University of California San Diego 2019. She is a recipient of the Outstanding Student Achievement in Sculpture award in 2015 from the International Sculpture Center. In 2018, Kasem had a solo Exhibition of her installation “Masricani” at the San Juan Island Museum of Art in the San Juan Islands, WA. She has also exhibited in group shows at the Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, NJ And the Mana Contemporary, Jersey City, NJ. Her most recent exhibitions were “Mwasah” a solo show in Feb. 2018 at the Grand Central Art center, Santa Ana, CA and group exhibition “Happening, 2018” Tijuana, Mexico Sept. 2018.

1805 Gallery & HG Fenton Company Supporting Local Artists 1805 Gallery was invited to work with HG Fenton Company to design and produce fifteen hand-painted murals for their new upscale urban apartment complex Vici located in the heart of Little Italy.  The murals, completed throughout the three-level parking structure, incorporate classic Italian imagery and modern designs that engage the local Italian culture.  Murals were hand-painted by local artists Ashley Fenderson, Kurosh Yahyai, Jason Acton and Lauren Siry.  HG Fenton Company, founded in 1906, is San Diego’s largest real estate organization that aims to create quality lifestyle opportunities where residents live well and businesses succeed. The company is committed to responsible development and management practices and meeting the needs of its commercial tenants and apartment residents over time. H.G. Fenton Company owns and manages 4.5 million square feet of office and industrial space and 16 apartment communities totaling over 3,100 homes. The company also manages a development pipeline of land and commercial projects. www.hgfenton.com

1805 Gallery presents a solo exhibition of new work by San Diego based artist Corey Dunlap. The exhibit will run from July 5 - July 27, 2018. The gallery will host a reception for the artist on Thursday, July 5, from 7-9PM. The exhibition focuses on a series of digitally rendered prints and sculptures that explore the boundaries between object and body. Dunlap constructs seductive objects in luminous colors that appear to coil and wiggle under an invisible pressure. The objects resemble fluid bodily forms that exist only within a virtual realm Dunlap has produced with a digital modeling software. Corey Dunlap (b. 1990) received his BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in 2013 and is currently an MFA candidate at the University of California, San Diego. Recent solo exhibitions of his work have taken place at Helmuth Projects, San Diego (2017), How’s Howard?, Boston (2016), In The Pines Gallery, Jackson, WY (2015) and Howard Art Project, Boston (2014). He has participated in shows at the San Diego Art Institute, The Chazen Museum of Art, Embassy Galley, and The New Art Center. Corey is a recipient of the 2016 SMFA Traveling Fellowship, which allowed him to travel to Reykjavik, Iceland to attend the SIM International Artist Residency.

While in residence at 1805 Gallery, Kurosh Yahyai has produced a new body of work that explores anxiety as a universal human condition. Yahyai paintings and sculptures challenge traditional notions of portraiture as a truthful representation of an individual and offers an alternative visual language to discuss a shared psychological condition.

“Anxiety is a fundamental and primal mental state that all humans experience. It doesn’t matter what experiences, background, ethnicity, social status people come from. It is all relative and anxiety is a common thread that makes us all very human.”-Kurosh Yahyai

Porto Vista Hotel is a boutique hotel in Little Italy, San Diego that showcases contemporary local and international artists throughout the hotel, creatively activating unusual and unlikely spaces. In collaboration with 1805 Gallery, the Porto Vista Hotel is pleased to announce the completion of a 12ft x 25ft mural on the rooftop of the Hotel by local visual artist Sarah Stieber.
On Friday, May 3, 2019, the Porto Vista Hotel will host an artist reception from 6-9PM on the 5th floor rooftop. The event will feature a special screening of a short film by Holly Sutor documenting Stieber’s experience painting her first mural in a unique location and a time-lapse film presented by The Artist Odyssey. The evening will close with a Q&A with Artist Sarah Stieber, Photographer Holly Sutor, and Art Program Director Lauren Siry.

The mural titled “May You Always See Magic” is inspired by Sarah Stieber’s, Glow with the Flow series, a body of work that is about Women possessing a “reflective superpower to reflect back that things in life that do not serve us and to let in what does”(Stieber). The mural depicts a female figure in a multi-color body suit reclining into a shiny rainbow floatie above clear blue water. The image touches upon a long history of the reclining odalisque, an art historical genre of a woman laying on her side for the spectator. Stieber’s reflective figure revisions the passive female form as an empowered figure, actively looking out to the horizon capturing an airborne plane in the glossy lens of her eyewear. The figure’s reflectivity not only liberates her from the spectator’s gaze but also advocates a revisualization of the reclining female as an objectified form.

Goodman’s series of gouache and ink paintings are inspired by the mystical and spiritual aspects of everyday life. Her work is composed of imagery derived from dreams, nature and patterns of human movement.

Jenessa Goodman (b. 1979) received a BFA from The San Francisco Art Institute and is a candidate for a Masters in Counseling Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute. She has exhibited at The La Jolla Athenaeum, Lux Art Institute in Encinitas and Kit and Ace in San Diego. Additionally, she has shown work in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco.