Klea McKenna: Witness Mark

Witness Mark brings together five bodies of work that trace an arc of experimentation and a near spiritual commitment to deep observation of the world around us; from the intricate patterns of nature to the labored and intrinsically flawed patterns made by human hands. Beginning with Rain Studies and Web Studies, photograms made outdoors at night in the darkness of the Hawaiian rainforest, McKenna coaxes analog black and white photographic materials to record evidence of broken patterns in detail beyond what is familiar to our eyes, the prisms of light inside each raindrop and the damaged architecture of a spider’s web.

McKenna’s intense physical process of embossing photographic paper into textures in the landscape is evidenced in the series Automatic Earth, which are “photographic rubbings” of the rings of trees, and Faultlines created with the ruptures, imperfections and physical scars of history written onto the landscape. Generation is a series of “photographic reliefs” made using a giant etching press in total darkness to emboss textiles into photographic paper. These objects are rich with touch, their patterns and flaws telling stories of colonialism, migration, and women’s labor and sexuality.

Klea McKenna’s photographic works have been exhibited internationally and are held in several public collections, including SFMOMA, LACMA, Getty Museum, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the US Embassy collection, The Mead Museum of Art and The Victoria and Albert Museum in London. McKenna is represented by Euqinom Gallery in San Francisco. This is her first monograph.