Bill Kane
United States
7 Works exhibited on Kooness
Current location
California, near San Francisco.
Represented by
Categories
Works by Bill Kane
Bill Kane is an American multi-media artist whose work intersects the boundaries of photography, painting and printmaking in an effort to examine the idea of what an image is and can be. He lives and works in California, near San Francisco.
Kane earned his B.A. in Education from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1973, and his MA in Photography from San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, in 1978. He is a two-time recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, once for Painting and once for Photography.
Since the late 1970s, Kane has continually experimented with different methods and materials as part of a wider exploration into the definition of image making. Photography and its fundamental elements have consistently informed this work. The Emanations series is an attempt to express the spiritual potential of the most essential aspect of photography: light. Each work in the series began its evolution as a scanned image of a Buddhist thangka—a spiritual painting of a Buddhist deity—which was then blurred and stretched until all that remained was a distilled image of color and form. These reduced images were then printed onto canvases, resulting in what Kane refers to as elemental “representations of the light bodies of the Buddhas.”
His work is included in numerous institutional collections, including those of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the de Young Museum, the Carnegie Mellon Institute in Pittsburgh, PA, the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, and the Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany.
Kane has exhibited his photographs and multi-media works extensively in more than 80 exhibitions throughout the United States, Europe and Asia and he is represented by Modernism, Inc. San Francisco, CA and Stremmel Gallery Reno, NV.
SELECTED SOLO SHOWS:
2018
Emanations Stremmel Gallery, Reno, NV
Emanations by Cathy Baum & Associates
Post Montgomery Center
45 Fremont St., San Francisco, CA
475 Sansome St., San Francisco, CA
Emanations Modernism West, San Francisco, CA
2012
New Rayograms Modernism West, San Francisco, CA
2007
Transactional Works Modernism West, San Francisco, CA
2004
Suprematist Nudes Modernism West, San Francisco, CA
1995
Victory Series Foster Goldstrom Gallery, New York, NY
1993
Bill Kane Foster Goldstrom Gallery, New York, NY
1991
Berlin Wall Galerie Thomas Gehrke, Hamburg, Germany
Photographs and Neon Kito Vegesack, Bremen, Germany
Walden Pond Foster Goldstrom Gallery, New York, NY
SELECTED GROUP SHOWS:
2018
Walls, Petaluma Art Center, Petaluma, CA
2010
Just Wright, a Fox Searchlight Pictures release by Sanaa Hamri
Fine Art Photography: Beyond Digital, Petaluma Arts Center, Petaluma, CA
20 x 20, Petaluma Arts Center, Petaluma, CA
2008
Definitely, Maybe a Universal Pictures motion picture by Adam Brooks
The Artists of ZYZZYVA, Mina Dresden Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2007
The Namesake a Fox Searchlight motion picture by Mira Nai
The de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA
Modernism West, San Francisco, CA
2006
Re Show: 2 decades of SOMA Artists 1960-1980, SomArts Cultural Center, San Francisco, CA
2005
Online/Onsite: Selections from Online: Photographer's Showcase, photo-eye Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
Sign Language, Henry Art Gallery, Monsen Study Collection of Photography, Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
2004
25th Anniversary Exhibition, Modernism, San Francisco, CA
2001
The First (Not the Last) Members Show, Petaluma Arts Council, Petaluma, C
2000
International Exhibit for the New Millenium, The Sharjah Arts Museum, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
The Baseball Show, George Krevsky Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Multi-Media Mania: Various Artists, Varied Media, George Krevsky Gallery, Francisco, CA
SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS:
Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA
The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA
The Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA
Stanford University, Stanford, CA
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA
Museum of Neon Art, Los Angeles, CA
The Southland Corporation, Dallas, TX
NW Ayer Advertising, New York, NY
Arthur Andersen Co., Chicago, IL
Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, Loretto, PA
Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA
Monsen Study Collection of Photography, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
SELECTED ARTICLES AND REVIEWS:
Christian Schiess, Pushing the Boundaries of Light and Order, an interview with Bill Kane, Signs of the Times, May 1993
Phyllis Braff, Neon as a Meduim for Complex Messages, The New York Times, April 4, 1993
Helen L. Kohen, In FIU show, painting is alive and well, The Miami Herald, January 12, 1992
Step, Fotos furs Leben, Blei fur den Spirit, Bremen die tageszeitung, mittwoch, March 20, 1991
Ralf Rummel, Berliner Mauerstucke fur die Kunstreligion, Bremen, March, 1991
Lucas Shatto, Lucas Shatto about Bill Kane, 6./7. Ausgabe Artist Kunstmagazin, February 1991
Carl Little, Bill Kane at Foster Goldstrom, Art in America, December 1989
Miriam Seidel, Light (Art) in August, New Art Examiner, October 1985
Bill Marvel, Kane's stylishness smooths his art's rough political edge, Dallas Times Herald, February 8, 1984
SELECTED CATALOGUES AND PUBLICATIONS:
Who's Who in American Art
Independent Vision, Modern and Contemporary Art from the Martin Muller Collection, Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, Arkansas
Modernism Twenty-Five Years 1979-2004, Modernism Inc., San Francisco, CA 2004
ZYZZYVA Winter 2004, San Francisco, CA 2004
MudFish 10, Contemporary Art and Poetry, Box Turtle Press/Attitude Art Inc. 1997
Amerikanische Kunst Aus der Sammlung Goldstrom New York, Bawag Foundation Wien 1994
Concepts with Neon, Staller Center for the Arts, State Univ. of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY 1993
American Art Today, Surface Tension, The Art Museum at Florida International University, Miami, FL 1991
Contemporary Neon, Rudy Stern, Retail Reporting Corporation, New York, New York, 1990
Liquid Fire, Michael Webb, Peregrine Smith Books, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1990
Contemporary Icons and Explorations, The Goldstrom Family Collection, Daniel Stetson, Davenport Museum of Art, Davenport, Iowa, 1988
Dalla Pop Art Americana, alla Nuova Figurazione, Opere del Museo d'Arte Moderna di Francoforte, Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea - Milano, Nuove edizioni Gabriele Mazzotta, 1987
Hans Jurgen Diehl, Bill Kane, Ralf Kerbach, Kastoriano-Shoshan Gallery, New York, NY, 1987
AWARDS AND HONORS:
1991
National Endowment for the Arts, Painting Fellowship
1984
The Eyes and Ears Foundation, S.F., CA, Photography Award
1981
National Endowment for the Arts, Photography Fellowship
1979
The Eyes and Ears Foundation, S.F., CA, Photography Award