KERRY TRIBE

“Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp,fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant ofbecoming.” –William James

Tribe’s latest exhibition finds the artist positioned as

caregiver, looking after loved ones in thesurrounding generations. Corner Piece, a video projected into the corner of the gallery, features

animated text exchanges with Tribe’s mother on the right wall and Tribe’s growing children on theleft. The artist’s “outgoing” messages,” always in blue, appear on one or the other side of thedivide as they navigate requests for transportation, medical advice, technical assistance, weeklyallowance and moral support.

A related series of works on paper, made with a homespun combination of watercolor and oilpastel, document recent text messages Tribe has received or sent. Elegant, funny and intimate,they capture the constant insect buzz of communication within a family, like room tone, traffic orweather.

Included in this exhibition are five large “scratch drawings” in rainbow-hued wax crayon and blackpastel. These reproduce diagrams, made by western philosophers, that attempt to explain thepresent moment from a first person perspective. Experientially, “now” is never the indivisible, non-durational point one sees on a timeline, but a continuum of consciousness that enfolds the pastand future within it. How else could we recognize duration, movement or change?

Tribe’s work has been the subject of solo presentations at SFMOMA, Camden Arts Centre,London and the Power Plant, Toronto, among others. She has received multiple awards,including the Herb Alpert Award, the USA Artists award, the Presidential Residency at StanfordUniversity, and was a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. Tribe’s work is in the publiccollections of MoMA, the Whitney, the Hammer Museum, and LACMA. Her films have beenscreened at the International Film Festival Rotterdam; the New York Film Festival, and the BFILondon Film Festival, among others. Tribe lives in Los Angeles with her husband, two kids, threechickens, two cats, a goldfish, a tarantula, and a praying mantis.