A Shell of the Sea of the Past

Sophia Chai

David Scanavino

Kianja Strobert

Letha Wilson

Kemar Keanu Wynter

September 5 – October 18, 2025

Opening Reception: Friday, September 5, 6–8 PM

To live in such a place was, for Isabel, to hold to her ear all day a shell of the sea of the past. This vague eternal rumor kept her imagination awake.

– Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery is pleased to open its fall season on September 5, 2025 with a group show of five artists whose work engages the physical and emotional impressions left by moments, events, or places. Working in mediums both traditional and experimental, each artist points to the past as something to be carried forward through visual and tactile means.

Sophia Chai’s practice involves drawing directly onto the walls and floors of her studio to construct spaces that are rendered through photography. These environments, defined by perspectival lines and shadows, appear deceptively simple, yet are made complex through the act of being photographed. Chai takes inspiration from Mohist scholars (named for the ancient Chinese Scholar Mo-Ti (470-391 BC), who used concave or convex mirrors to closely examine the relationship between objects and their corresponding images and shadows. They observed that while shadows and reflections move with their source objects, their speed, size, and movement do not match the object. This insight challenged assumptions about perception and reality, suggesting that what we see does not always equate to what we

know—an idea that resonates deeply in Chai’s work.

In a piece made on the gallery wall, David Scanavino reconstitutes a full week’s worth of the New York Times into wet paper pulp, abstracting the events of the world into material form. Each day’s edition is recast on the gallery wall in the size and shape of the paper’s front page. Pressed by hand, the pulp carries the artist’s fingerprints in its clay-like surface. As the rectilinear shapes dry, they reveal a spectrum of tonal variations, reflecting the shifting content of photographs and inks from day to day. These subtle changes accumulate into a gradient, reflecting the differences and specificity of each day’s reports across the installation.

Kianja Strobert’s hand-built and hand-painted sculptures take the form of park benches, utilitarian structures that suggest both support and leisure while pointing to social interaction and societal fragility. The works are at once evocative and functional, inviting visitors to sit, alone or together, in conversation or quiet reflection. Strobert adds

further complexity to each piece by attaching images and everyday objects, layering associations, experiences, and language into their interpretation.

Letha Wilson physically merges traditional photographs with industrial materials like concrete and metal. She pours concrete into her photographic prints, transforming them into sculpture and challenging the way we might typically perceive their landscape imagery. Wilson often photographs subjects that embody a particular place highlighting

both permanence and change. Rocks, oceans, and skies may appear visually consistent over time but they are shifting constantly, highlighting the contrast between the timeless and the fleeting. Wilson’s work points us to the relationship between the natural world and human intervention and experience.

Kemar Keanu Wynter’s large-scale acrylic paintings are made directly on the rough floorboards of his studio. Drawing from memories of shared meals, recipes followed, or conversations revisited, Wynter builds abstract compositions where lived experience and built environment merge. The studio itself becomes both a timestamp and an active participant, guiding the flow of pigment as it washes across the surface and absorbs into the material – asserting its own layered history in the work’s making.