Meet the Artist // Ashley Kraynak

Could you tell me about your background and the project you’re proposing for this three-month curatorial residency at GlogauAIR?

I am originally from San Francisco. I studied art history at UCLA and I just graduated in June. I studied abroad at Humboldt University in Berlin last year and I was a curatorial assistant at GlogauAIR, that’s how I got connected to the curatorial residency program, which is fairly new as we know.

The project that I proposed is based on the idea of home and comfort. I think it started because we’re in an artist residency, so it’s different from your typical gallery space, because the space itself is a little bit more homey. It has these windows and heaters that remind me of an apartment. It interests me how certain spaces can provoke emotions. Experiencing the city in my solitude and it being kind of lonely but also getting to know people and visiting their homes and as I made friends, but also understanding how lonely a city can be and make you feel all had an impact on my topic.

I was searching for my home away from home because California is so far away, so that’s how the concept for the exhibition came about in the first place.

You’re interested in the relationship between human connection and comfort within urban landscapes. In this sense, what inspiration do you draw from Berlin? How do you see these themes represented in the city?

I think what happens with human connection in a big city is very interesting as opposed to any other smaller city where the life rhythm is slower, many people live with big families— and you hang out with your family a lot. But here, especially in the art world, there are many young people who come alone. On one hand there’s a great sense of artistic community, but on the other hand, the city is always changing and growing and there are new people leaving and new people coming in, and that can create feelings of loneliness. It can also be exciting, but it means that you seek out comfort in different ways.

In the winter, when I was studying alone, I felt that friends were the warmth and the comfort that I needed. They were my home and now that it’s summer, I see the same thing, but in a different way – on the balconies a lot of people having wine with their friends and enjoying the long sunshine, and when I see things like that, I’m picking up ideas for my concept as well, like who do you invite into your home and to the different rooms of your home.

Have you managed to find this home feeling in the city so far?

I would say so. Even beyond the fact that a lot of my friends that I studied with live elsewhere and they have gone back home, I found that the more I find out about Berlin as a city, the more I like it, and there’re many places that I used to go to frequently…so it becomes more like home even though it’s nothing like California by any means. I find little bits and pieces that I relate to and it feels nice to know my way around nowadays.

I know that you were recently choosing the artists for your upcoming exhibition. How did you manage the selection process? Have you faced any difficulties in it?

I would say the restriction was that artists needed to be based in Berlin. That way transport was easy, and they could attend the opening, but that wasn’t too difficult because there are so many artists in Berlin. It was actually fun to try to find them, and I checked out so many artists and found other ones too because I had a long list to go through. For selecting the mediums, I’m really drawn to photography, for example, since it’s a personal hobby of mine, and I loved Giulia Gr’s work. That part of the selection process was the most fun, because we could go through her whole archive together. I also liked working on diversifying the paintings included. Arbnor Karaliti’s paintings have these beautiful colors and very realistic characters, while Suzanne Levesque’s pieces are generally darker and a different medium – they include textiles. One difficulty was my worry about whether the pieces would blend smoothly when hung next to each other, but I think ultimately their differences are what give the concept depth.

Could you expand a bit more on the themes that will be represented in your exhibition? How are you planning to present these concepts within the space in our project space?

Because I have the three rooms in the project space, I want to organize them not necessarily like a moving narrative, but bits and pieces depending on the room of different elements of what you do in a home, maybe even what you do outside the home, and what a space makes you remember, and what it makes you feel. For example, the first room will address the concept of dream life, and there’s some surrealistic art that I’m interested in for that.

The works of one artist I visited, Jonathan Esperester, depict a sort of dreamscape. They all have beds and sometimes paintings on the walls, sometimes there is a dark figure in the corner, which he said reminded him of dreams from his childhood. Often the center is more detailed, and it fades out around the corners – it’s like you’re having a dream or at least remembering something. Either way, there are elements of the subconscious present.

Suzanne Levesque, like I mentioned, works with patchwork and textiles on the canvas – there are little pieces here and there of bedding, pillows, and fabric, even things like little paintings she passed by in her childhood home. It made me think about how we grew up and where we grew up has so much to do with who we are now, and the things that we dream also have to do with who we are and what we want or what we’re scared of, so I was really interested in that. I want my personal experience in Berlin to be a part of the exhibition as well, solitude but then also togetherness. I like that because it’s personal for me but for many people as well, especially in a city. It’s like, I’m alone but I have a community wherever I go, in any space.