The spring fling at Fringe features a Photo Installation by Monica Furmanski (Main Gallery) and an Audiovisual Installation by Kadet Kuhne (Lower Level).

In her new work Cryptofloriography, Monica Furmanski creates a dynamic environment that alters the viewer's perception and expectations. Experimenting with the removal of information in photographs and working intuitively, the artist has abstracted and reduced photographic images that give the viewer minimal information. Viewers must recreate the whole, filling in the "missing" parts. Through this distillation of information the imagery becomes detached from its original source and takes on a new form, seemingly organic and cryptic. Unlike a collage, in which separate images are pieced together, her work takes two slices of time and overlaps them thus complicating time's passage or one-directional moment from the past to the future. The viewer interacts with the images and activates the standard viewer/image relationship, extending the possibilities of photography beyond its traditional application by turning it into an immersive experience that viewers must actively participate in.

Monica Furmanski received her Masters of Fine Art from Claremont Graduate University. Her work has been exhibited at the McNish Gallery at Oxnard College, The Peggy Phelps Gallery at Claremont Graduate University and at the Huntington Beach Art Center. She has upcoming shows this year at the Williamson Gallery at Scripps College and Upfront Gallery, Ventura.





Infinite Delay by Kadet Kuhne is an audiovisual installation that explores the subtleties of tension that exist between surrender and resistance through an experiential narrative. The captivating underwater images of a restrained subject present a dialectic - possibly depicting someone who is being forced to wait, or alternatively representing a subject actively engaged in the erotics of waiting. The voiceless figure in this mysterious subterranean atmosphere investigates how renunciation could be an affirmation of power and a means of absolute embodiment. The sensing body in its inaction surrenders itself, and all questions of identity and placement are dissolved into a virtual suspension of absolute definition. The result is a blurring of lines - between the inner and outer world, self and other, and past and present. The immersive blend of sounds composed in direct relation to the imagery was co-created with mem1, a collaborative venture between Laura Thomas-Merino and M.Cera in which samples generated by extended cello technique are manipulated using custom software built in Max/MSP.

Kadet Kuhne is a media artist based in California whose work includes video, installation and music composition. As an award-winning filmmaker she has numerous video shorts that are screened worldwide, most recently at the Sundance Film Festival. Her video installation series, Holding Pattern, has been exhibited at LACMA, The Brewery Project and REDCAT in Los Angeles. Kadet has two solo CD releases, Seismic and Thin Air, and is featured on various compilations including MONO:POLY and Women Take Back The Noise. Since graduating from CalArts with an MFA in Music Composition & Integrated Media, Kadet has moved into teaching at UCSD and owns a Post-Production Sound Studio, Audible Shift. Additional exhibitions and performances include Museum of Art Lucerne, Musees de Strasbourg, MOCA-LA, San Francisco Arts Commission, The LAB, Highways Performance Gallery, CEAIT Festival, The Weisman Art Museum, Not Still Art Festival and The Knitting Factory.