Karen Kraven’s works set up unexpected encounters between sculptures and images, uncanny resemblances and misleading juxtapositions. Like a stage or film set that’s been frozen in time, these spaces confound and delight through the practiced strategies of a confident artist. Kraven exploits the illusion and attraction found in such pursuits as sports, hunting, fishing and playing card games. These motifs take the guise of everyday items, handmade surrogates and decoys. Shifting and mutating, they collapse upon one another, mesmerizing us as they reappear enlarged, divided and flattened.
Kraven holds an MFA from Concordia University (Montreal) where she was the recipient of the Dale & Nick Tedeschi Fellowship. Recent solo exhibitions include Razzle Dazzle Sis Boom Bah at the Darling Foundry (Montreal), A Mucker and a Grinder at Parisian Laundry and As Above, So Below at Centre Clark (Montreal). Her work has also been shown at Centre Dare-Dare (Montreal), Leonard & Ellen Bina Gallery (Montreal) and Blackwood Gallery (University of Toronto Mississauga). She has participated in artist’s residencies at The Banff Centre and with Reverse Pedagogy (Venice). From 2013-2016, she will have a Montreal Artist’s Creation Studio at the Darling Foundry (Montreal).
