Septemeber 2025 / Chronoform

CHRONOFORM

Michelle Robinson
Christine Atkinson
Daniel Tovar
Ashton Phillips
Zara Kuredjian
Elizabeth Folk
Kiyomi Fukui Nannery

September 4 - 27, 2025

Opening Reception, Thursday, September 4, 5-8pm

Summer Gallery Hours:
Friday–Sunday, 12–5pm

With the increasing frequency and devastation of fires, earthquakes, heat waves, and floods, we are reminded of the fragility of our climate. We are more and more aware of the massive environment to which we are all intimately connected, but which we barely understand.

Beyond a world of human time, the works in this show probe geologic time and make connections between the two. These connections are explored through themes of mysticism, materiality, and the body, and through ideas of alienation and exposure to the environment.

Wildfire debris, gaping cavities in the earth, molten metals, volcanic rock, earth, and soil are all used as either material or context in this exhibition. Michelle Robinson and Christine Atkinson document the soil and natural disasters as a means of connection to it. Daniel Tovar and Ashton Phillips investigate alienation and geologic time. Zara Kuredjian, Elizabeth Folk, and Kiyomi Fukui Nannery communicate the fragility of the environment and its potential for cultivation.

Together, these works indicate potential avenues for situating ourselves within a new geologic understanding of soil and the individual, of place and time.

ARTIST STATEMENTS // BIOS

Christine Atkinson
My work examines the domestication of the American West, an often brutal process that turned our wilderness into a “resource” to  be exploited, tamed and used. Moving between sculpture, installation and photography, my practice pieces together the history of the landscape that has been shaped by colonialism. I draw on sites and materials that are either a vigil of preservation or have borne witness to this destruction.

Wildfire debris is an important material in my practice. Fire is a natural part of the ecosystem, yet climate change, invasive plants, and general mismanagement, has changed fire into something far more out of control. The fire in my work represents both death, but also the memory of rebirth. 

Christine Atkinson was born in Stockton, CA and raised in Northern California. She received her undergraduate degree from the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara California and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2013.

Atkinson is a current member of the artist collective, Monte Vista Projects. She lives and works in Los Angeles.

https://catkinson.com/

Kiyomi Fukui Nannery 
I investigate the intersection of memory, materiality, and ecological loss through printmaking, drawing, and natural pigment works. My practice centers on the methodical extraction and application of mineral and botanical pigments—a process I view as both material exploration and metaphysical inquiry. These colorants carry what I call "ghosts": accumulated histories and emotional traces held within natural materials.

In my recent series Ghosts of the Marsh, I memorialize extinct California wetland species through layers of foraged pigments, woodcut printing, and collage—creating works that serve as both elegy and archive.

Kiyomi Fukui Nannery (b. 1988, Michigan) is a multidisciplinary artist and educator based in Long Beach, California. Born in the United States and raised in Japan, she works across printmaking, drawing, and natural pigments to explore themes of loss, memory, and belonging.

https://www.kiyomifukui.com/

Michelle Robinson
I grieve the losses, those that have already occurred and those still to come, resulting from humankind's impact on the environment. In my work, I practice a form of activist melancholia. Mine is an anti-conciliatory mourning, intended less to heal and more to spur action; to build empathy for non-human bodies and discourage complacency in the face of such tragedies.

The Grave Rubbings are part of a larger project documenting the aftermath of historic wildfires in the Winema-Fremont National Forest in Oregon and Joshua Tree National Park in California. 

At each site, the remains of burned trees were still present in the landscape, sometimes after decades had passed, their charred bodies resistant to decay in the desert climate. Each image is a direct impression taken from the bodies of such trees, accompanied by photographic documentation and notated GPS coordinates. In some cases, enough charcoal remained that the pressure of my hand alone was enough to create the marks on the paper. These efforts force me to look, and not turn away from, the impact of a loss that will not be restored in my lifetime.

Michelle Robinson is a multi-disciplinary artist living in Los Angeles. She studied environmental design, animation, and visualization at Texas A&M University and holds an MFA in visual art from the New Hampshire Institute of Art.

www.michellerobinsonstudio.com


Elizabeth Folk
Elizabeth Folk is an interdisciplinary artist and educator whose work spans sculpture, performance, and radical pedagogy. Born in Charlottesville, Virginia and raised outside Washington, D.C., she earned her BFA from the University of Colorado Boulder and her MFA from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Based between California’s Central Coast and Los Angeles, she is an Associate Professor of Art and Design at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, and an active member of the artist-run collective Monte Vista Projects in Los Angeles. Her practice is rooted in art as a tool for social change and liberation, drawing on the visual languages of kink, pop culture, and design to subvert dominant U.S. narratives surrounding disabled and femme identities.

www.elizabethfolk.com


Zara Kuredjian
I have an interdisciplinary practice focused on materials relationship to liminality and the ethereal. I am deeply engaged with the porosity and liquidity of matter and its relationship to time and energy. 

Within my practice, material agency is a paramount consideration for how work is developed. The expression of a material's properties are considered through their inherent qualities as well as how they react to other materials and forces.

Zara Kuredjian is a visual artist based in Los Angeles and is part of the artist’s collective Monte Vista Projects. She was granted an MFA in Visual Art (2020) with an emphasis in Sculpture, Object, and Installation from the University of California, San Diego.

She is a recent recipient of the 2025 Lightning Fund Grant, the David Antin Prize, and a Russell Foundation Grant.

www.zarakuredjian.com


Ashton S. Phillips is a socially and ecologically-engaged artist, researcher, and writer working with dirt, water, plastic, and interspecies agents of (dis)repair as primary materials and collaborators. He is particularly interested in the transness of matter, the impurity of bodies, and the possibility of imperfect repair through mutual contamination. His practice prioritizes collaboration, experimental play, speculative (un)making, and embodied research over linear inquiry, hierarchical methods, or stable results.   

Ashton holds an MFA in Studio Art from the Maryland Institute College of Art and a JD from the George Washington University Law School. His creative and critical writing have been published by Trans Studies Quarterly, Antennae -  The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture, Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles, and Cambridge University Press. He is a recent recipient of a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.

www.ashtonsphillips.com

Daniel Tovar

Daniel Tovar is an LA-based multidisciplinary artist, writer, and educator. his work explores the ways technology shapes and reshapes the physical landscape, and by extension, our experience of it. 

Using sound, video, and sculpture Tovar's focus is on contrasting and contradictory developments, infrastructures, and forms of life that vie for power within the landscape. 

His creative process is heavily influenced by a background in philosophy (a PhD at Northwestern University was focused on Aristotle’s account of perception) and his longtime field recording practice.

Daniel Tovar is an artist and educator living in Los Angeles. He is Liberal Arts faculty at SCI-Arc and a board member of Monte Vista Projects. He has a PhD from Northwestern and a BA from UC Berkeley, both in philosophy. His multi-disciplinary work—incorporating audio, video, and sculpture—has been exhibited and performed at Monte Vista Projects, Wonzimer Gallery, Coaxial Arts Foundation, Materials and Applications, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, among others.

http://tovar.io