K. Imperial Fine Art is pleased to present its first solo show of the work of Andrea Joki.

Andrea’s work is centered around themes of memory and sensory experience from a perspective shaped by wanderlust and contemplation of the natural world and our place in it. “echo in the half-light” refers to that time of day when the sun disappears and one’s sense of sight is diminished, like a blindness that takes hold as darkness sets in. The echo is the signal that might appear when not looking, a reflection that takes shape in the corner of the eye as perception shifts to the periphery.

This exhibition features works made in the last several months during an artist residency at Eastside International in Los Angeles – an opportunity that has brought with it empowering political experiences, an immersion in the southern California landscape, and solitude.

I approached this body of work in the spirit of looking for a sign in unsettled times. It marks an important shift as I recalibrate a dialogue between gesture and geometry. The colors come from the green of the hillsides, the pink and yellow flicker of evening light, the silver gray fog and the matte black of darkness. The show includes found paintings picked from the detritus of the studio floor and paintings on canvas with kinetic brush strokes and stains that evoke moments in flux.

(Andrea Joki)

Andrea Joki is a painter whose kinetic language embraces gesture and geometry in distilling ideas of perception, memory and sensory experience. Her work has been shown widely including shows at Eastside International (Los Angeles), School 33 Art Center (Baltimore), Waiting Room (Minneapolis), the Cleveland Museum of Art, SPACES (Cleveland), and Myers School of Art Gallery (Akron). She has participated in artist residencies including the Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for Creative Arts and the Grafikwerkstatt Dresden (Germany). Most recently, she was awarded an artist residency at Headlands Center for the Arts (2016) and is currently serving as Community Artist in Residence at Eastside International in Los Angeles. She is the recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award (2015) and a Creative Workforce Fellowship through Community Partnership for Arts and Culture (2009). Joki’s work is included in New American Paintings Issue 107.