Case Edgerton Studios is proud to present new work for the board by Minneapolis-based artist Michael Kareken. MEETING PLACE is on view through October at the corner of Case and Edgerton. 

Kareken’s newest body of work was inspired by the experience of looking out a neighbor’s window at dusk and observing how the dynamic reflections shifted with the light - a motif that has now occupied several years of intensive study. In these complex compositions, inner and outer worlds blend together as the window both reveals and reflects two distinct spaces, the edges blurring with the artist’s fluid marks of conte and gouache.

“People are absent from the work, although their presence is implied in the parked cars, porch lights, and dining room tables. The focus is on the space itself and the movements, rhythms and transitions between the overlapping scenes and objects. Based on observations of specific places, the images are inventions that combine multiple locations, points of view, seasons, and times of day. These elements are woven together in a way that is intended to feel at once cohesive and disjointed. I used what I observed in the window reflections as a guide, blurring edges to connect near and far, dissolving forms into shadows, establishing multiple light sources to create shifting focal points within the compositions.”

Michael Kareken, a Tacoma, Washington native, moved to Minnesota in 1993 after ten years of studying and working in New York. Kareken has been the recipient of grants and awards from the Bush Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, The McKnight Foundation, Arts Midwest, the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Millay Colony for the Arts, among others. Kareken is a recipient of the Louise Nevelson Award for Art from the American Academy of Arts & Letters and printmaking award from the National Academy of Design. He is Professor Emeritus at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, where he taught painting and drawing from 1996 to 2023.