EXHIBITIONS ON VIEW
Jeff France Debuts Installation An Attempt at Three Things with Four People
On view April 22 - May 30, 2026
CapSOUL Gallery, 2026 Artist In Residence
Opening Celebration: Friday, April 24, 2026 from 5:00 - 7:30PM
AST Artist-in-Residence Jeff France reveals An Attempt at Three Things with Four People, a multi-projector musical and film installation in the CapSOUL Gallery. With musical influences including turntablism, neoclassical, and the natural and manipulated acousmatic sounds of the Musique Concrète genre, France’s exhibit attempts to deconstruct the nature of classical rhythm structure in music. Three projections will play simultaneously, featuring France with other players Juice McKenna, James Matthew Haas, and Jacob Trombetta. Each video has its own timing, creating an opportunity for the elements to sync together or drift apart. Ambient, hypnotic, and sometimes disorienting, An Attempt at Three Things with Four People offers a minimalistic film approach to an evolving and experimental composition.
“I experiment with musical and time-based video mediums. I am visually influenced by the filmmaker Michel Gondry and the mosaic aspects of David Hockney’s Joiners. Musically, I’m inspired by turntablism, Musique Concrète, and Neoclassical composers. I draw on aspects of these influences to create large-format video sculptures and installations that contain loosely composed music for multiple playback devices. For this piece, my main goal was to create minimalist works that could play in or out of sync with each other using three video projections… Everything I did led me to the conclusion that the works should not attempt to be hectic and instead be slow and surreal.” – Jeff France
About the Artist Jeff France:
Jeff France is an Akron-based musician and video artist. He played in punk rock and hardcore bands throughout high school, creating band packaging with DIY aesthetics. Jeff has a degree in Media Production from the University of Akron. Inspired by turntablism and electronic music, Neoclassical composition, and techniques like Musique Concrète, he started to mix soundscapes with his visual art experiments. Rooted in time-based mediums of animation and video, he has created installation pieces that incorporate obsolete technology to process musical and visual elements into experimental digital and analog mosaics. His video and animation art have played at the Open Lens Festival in Eugene, Oregon, Akron’s Freakishly Short Animation Festival, Essential Tremors, and the first Akron Independent Film Festival. He produced animated music videos for Drummer’s “Feel Good Together,” Floco Torres’ “Nonstop,” and France-based electronic composer Warren Walker’s “Faye.” He currently performs with Floco Torres as a backing musician and live visual media artist. He enjoys playing in his bands, Brutal Bedtime and Post Grebo. He also performs solo under the name Fej.
Cultural Identity Loss and Reconnection in Kim Kapera’s The Lucky Ship
On view April 22 - May 30, 2026
Burton D. Morgan Foundation Gallery
Opening Celebration: Friday, April 24, 2026 from 5:00 - 7:30PM
Artist Kim Kapera presents The Lucky Ship, a visual memoir of the sacrifices Kapera’s Polish grandparents made to give her family a better life. Through photographs, multi-sensory displays, and intimate ephemera, Kapera’s The Lucky Ship explores themes of immigration, homesickness, assimilation, the grandparent and grandchild relationship, and grief.
After the loss of her grandparents, Kapera felt cut off from her cultural identity. Diving into the 1960s relics of their decision to leave Poland to emigrate to the U.S., Kapera finds clues that help her recreate stories and reconnect to her roots. The Lucky Ship is not only a tale of Kapera’s family, but a vulnerable and universal investigation of self and familial history.
“Following the death of my maternal grandparents, I had to reconcile a dual identity that suddenly felt hollow and conflicted. The physical connection to my grandparents was severed, and so was what felt like the only tangible remnants of my Polish heritage. What happens when we lose ties to language, culture, and memory? How can we heal something that feels both personal and foreign to us? The more research I did, the clearer it became that I wasn’t the only one seeking to understand my roots. As anti-immigrant sentiments continue to rise globally, my objective is to instill greater empathy toward foreigners by sharing pieces of my own family’s history.” – Kim Kapera
About the Artist Kim Kapera:
Kim Kapera (she/her) is a photographer and mixed media artist. She was selected for Kent State University's Spring 2026 DI Creatives-In-Residence Program and is one of Akron Soul Train's 2026 artists-in-residence. Her passion for stories and culture has most recently been pursued through the lens of her Polish heritage. She is interested in collecting memories from the Polish diaspora and using traditional Polish folk art in modern applications. Her work explores themes of nostalgia, identity, and loss. Kim studied photojournalism and French at Ohio University and holds a bachelor's degree in visual communication. The ethnographic research project she completed in Morocco was awarded first place in the Journalism Department at the 2012 Ohio University Creative Exposition.
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