Gallery

Portals, Pathways, and the Space Between Us: The Carnegie

October 18

Saturday, October 18, from 6-9 p.m.

Free and Open to the Public

Covington Plaza,  Underground Walkway

144 Madison Ave. Covington, KY 41011

This iteration of Portals, Pathways, and the Space Between Us will activate the underground walkway of the Covington Plaza. A sound installation by Nick Keeling using four modified 8-track cartridge machines will be interwoven by a single decaying audio tape loop traversing the space. The source audio material, composed by Britni Bicknaver and Brianna Kelly, will travel from machine to machine slowly decaying, overlapping, and warping with each passing playback. This sound installation will play in tandem with ghostly projections from Sora Kim and Katinka Bock.

Sponsors: Taft Research Center and Blink

A special thank you to the City of Covington.

Portals, Pathways, and the Space Between Us is an exhibition in collaboration with KADIST that explores placemaking, shapeshifting, and the temporalities of Kentucky through the Ohio River.

The exhibition explores placemaking, shapeshifting, and temporalities of Kentucky through the Ohio River. The river is a point of study and departure, its historical significance rooted in division and symbols of freedom. The river acts as both a border and a point of shared connection—the complexities of this contradiction are unique to Kentucky, revealing the nuances of placemaking and identity.

Thinking of movement, fluidity, ephemerality, and environmental activation, this exhibition consists of outdoor pop-up video exhibitions that take place throughout the state of Kentucky. The exhibition spans six venues across six cities in Kentucky, occurring once a month from June to November 2025. The traveling exhibition is composed of two videos and a soundscape that represent international and regional voices that interweave disruption and contemplation through placid yet subversive temporalities.

– Sso-Rha Kang Curator, The Carnegie

Nick Keeling is a sound artist and composer based in the Ohio River Valley. A classically trained musician with a passion for history, Nick explores topics of entropy, decay, and memory using musical instruments and home audio equipment salvaged from industrial America. His work is anchored in fragile magnetic tape recordings, balancing classical composition with ambient soundscapes. Each piece weaves together layers of field recordings, found audio, piano performances, and collaborations with other musicians. Nick has presented performances and installations in a multitude of spaces including factories, Masonic halls, and living rooms. Many of his recorded works are part of multimedia projects that incorporate antiquated photography and experimental film techniques.

Releases of his can be found at https://nickkeeling.bandcamp.com/

Katinka Bock has a predilection for modest and natural materials like terracotta, wood, plaster, ceramic, leather and fabric. With a sort of delicate simplicity, she often associates these materials to found objects. For the artist, used materials hold a sense of something beyond their materiality. They are provocative because of the way in which they evoke deep, immediate emotions that precede conceptualisation. In her practice, Bock invests in the exhibition spaces and conceives her works in resonance. Just the same, she crafts a mental space in her work to subtly invite the spectator to reflect. Katinka Bock has been selected for artist residencies in France, USA, Germany and Italy at the Villa Medici, Rome in 2012-2013. In 2012 she was winner of the prestigious Fondation d’entreprise Ricard prize, France. In 2015 she received the Visual Arts Grant of the Fondacion Botin, Spain. She was nominated for the Prix Marcel Duchamp, France, and won the Prix de production 1% Marché de l’art, France.

Sora Kim is among Korea’s avant-garde artists portraying modern life conditions. She has been involved in many projects that are the result of collaborations with the socially dispossessed or through the participation of observers. By introducing personal relationships into her art, Kim proposes a new model and alternative to existing organizations and systems in our society. Sora Kim’s installations offer provocative and necessary explorations of the subjectivity of value and consumption. Sora Kim has exhibited her work internationally including the Mattress Factory (Pittsburgh), Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, ArtSonje Center, Rodin Gallery (Seoul), BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, REDCAT Gallery (Los Angeles), Atelier Hermès (Seoul), Istanbul Biennial (2007), Busan Biennale (2006), Venice Biennale (2003, 2005) and Yokohama Triennale (2005) and Espai d’Art Contemporani de Castelló in Spain.

Britni Bicknaver received a BFA in 2005 from Art Academy of Cincinnati and an MFA in 2017 from University of Cincinnati, both located in Cincinnati, OH. Her work has been featured in many exhibitions including Third Annual Red Square Film and Video Show, Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH (2003); The History of the Universe Part One: In The Beginning, Museum Gallery/ Gallery Museum, Cincinnati, OH (2012); The Nothing That Is: A Drawing Show in Five Parts, The Carnegie, Covington, KY (2017); and City Under Exposure, The Main Branch of the Public Library of Hamilton County, Cincinnati, OH (2022). Bicknaver currently lives and works in Cincinnati, OH.

Brianna Kelly is a multi-media artist, musician, community song leader, and puppet apprentice living in Cincinnati, OH with her spouse and dog named Slam Dunk. She has spent the last decade in various roles exploring the intersection of the arts, contemplative spirituality, and community building, while performing and touring in many bands in the Cincinnati music scene. She is currently finishing her debut solo album to be released in 2025.