Kadet Kuhne: The Way Through

Krowswork in Oakland presents “The Way Through,” a solo exhibition by Kadet Kuhne. Kuhne’s work centers on an existential dilemma (and dialectic) of movement versus non-movement, resistance versus surrender, receding from versus emerging into…space, presence, being. At its heart Kuhne’s art is seeking a way to explore and come to know the unconscious while avoiding the very real potential of being drowned by it. In order to fully investigate this struggle, Kuhne makes it palpable by creating specific, experiential artworks that employ single- and multi-channel videos, intensive sound design, 3D printed sculpture, and two-dimensional images. With these works she provides a visual, aural, and also somatic simulacrum of our tightly spun-together nature—one in which any movement toward transcendence is simultaneously frustrated by inertia, negation, or perceived boundaries. Kuhne, like one of her artistic heroes Samuel Beckett, understands that this strange union, even if often dark and uncomfortable, is peculiarly human and inevitable. Kuhne does not shy away from it. She is aware that it is exactly in these moments—"states of stasis," she calls them—that consciousness comes into being. They do not require escape. But to ultimately move beyond the duality of their tangle requires trying to tease them apart.