JESSICA GOMULA-KRUZIC Complex Ecologies
DIRECTOR’S FOREWORD
Jessica Gomula-Kruzic, Complex Ecologies - Represents a delightful opportunity to view the recent work of my esteemed collogue, Jessica Gomula-Kruzic. As an artist, Jessica’s work explores the relationship between the environment, the audience, and the artist. Using video animation projects, live performances, and responsive systems she creates collaborative intermedia artworks that addresses socially-consciousness subject matter.
Like many of our faculty, Jessica is not a native of the central valley. But she has put down roots and over the years, has had a profoundly positive effect on the arts in this region. This exhibition is a celebration of her recent sabbatical. This is the third time that I have been fortunate enough to be able to watch the amazing development of her work. From her first works of printmaking to her current time based media work, Jessica continually creates work that pushes ever expanding boundaries in art.
Video and Time Based Media, in all forms, is one of the Art Department’s fundamental areas of educating artists. Having exceptional exhibitions of Video and Time Based Media art in our galleries, helps to generate meaningful discussions and lifelong learning about the art of Video and Time Based Media. The University Art Gallery’s programing helps support our faculty’s teaching.
I would like to thank the many colleagues that have been instrumental in presenting this exhibition. Jessica Gomula-Kruzic for the chance of exhibiting her amazing work, Alice Heeren, for the insightful essay, Brad Peatross of the College of the Arts, California State University, Stanislaus for the catalog design and Stan State Print Shop for the printing this catalog. I would also like to extend many thanks to the Instructionally Related Activates Program of California State University, Stanislaus, as well as anonymous donors for the funding of the exhibition and catalogue. Their support is greatly appreciated.
Dean De Cocker,
Director University Art Gallery
California State University, Stanislaus
WHEN THE RIVER BECOMES THE SEA
Complex Ecologies asks us to examine our own global condition and proposes our encounter with the future as ever looming. Gomula-Kruzic’s video works explore the intersections of isolation, connection, and interaction, different and at times contradictory impulses that nevertheless call attention to the complexity and scale of climate change.
The videos in this body of work achieve this push and pull by confronting viewers with the dynamic relationship between people, wildlife, and wilderness. This relationship becomes embodied in film as dancers mold themselves and react to the landscape and each other: stones, rivers, sand, and tree trunks are engaged through tactile interactions with the bodies; bodies push against nature and one another. Gomula-Kruzic’s films draw us into the intersections of isolation, connection, and interaction. These at times contradictory impulses call attention to the complexity and scale of climate change, proposing an intimate experience that is nevertheless collective. The pandemic impacted artists in many ways, highlighting newfound isolation and troubled searches for connection—with one another and with nature. Gomula-Kruzic responded by delving into her reconnection with nature, shifting her work from explorations of the body to explorations of the body in nature, a theme prevalent throughout the show. “As I was creating the media for this show I was struck by how firmly we draw the lines that define the edges of our personal world. How we oversimplify other’s lived realities,” Gomula-Kruzic said. “In truth none of those lines are solid, they are all intersected, broken, and overlaid by countless other paths. They are blurred lines.”
In Autumn’s Embrace dancer Nicole Zvarik molds her body to stones, balancing between rock formations, as Gomula-Kruzic highlights the human form at once in synch with and in opposition to natural elements. Calling to mind works such as Dennis Oppenheim’s Parallel Stress (1970) and Valie Export’s Encirclement (1976), this tension between body and surrounding speaks to the tensions between humans and their embodied experiences of the world. The dancer’s pristine white clothing against the grey tones of the riverbed creates a stark value contrast that highlights both the solid, sharp angles of the landscape and the softer folds of the fabric, the contours of the human form. The value transitions also call viewers’ attention to the water and the rippling of white light across the grey surface, juxtaposing the static nature of the stones and the dynamisms of the dance and the water; fluidity and solidity intertwine and play against one another. Interspersed with Gods-eye viewpoint the work brings resonance with yellow leaves on the ground around the larger rock formations and among grey pebbles: further markers of dynamisms, transitions, and the ebbs and flows of time.
The Spaces Within opens with a textual reference that speaks to our self-creation and molding of empty space. Viewers see human-made structures and machines appearing circuitously in the peripheries, at once standing in contrast to the wild landscape while highlighting the idea of wilderness itself as a human construct. Nature is neither wild nor tamed, empty nor full; it just is. As the film’s opening text highlights: “We make a vessel from a lump of clay; it is the empty space that makes it useful. / We make doors and windows in a room; it is the empty spaces that make it livable;” we mold space and envelop it to assuage our own fears of how nature and space envelop us, of how we are inevitably contained by it.
With Unheard, Gomula-Kruzic destabilizes the structures of time and space she establishes in other sequences. In this film above and below and within and without are inverted. In contrast to the sharp and even dizzying
audio of the other videos in the show, Unheard interposes sounds of the body as it moves against nature. Here the interaction is not the sinuous flow of Autumn’s Embrace , but rather a forceful encounter bordering on struggle as dancer Zvarik clings to the tree to support her body rather than molding herself to it. She grasps in search of safety and solidity. Here nature and the human form are at times more sharply in contrast than in the other compositions, though as a sense of boundaries is blurred, as up becomes down, viewers are invited to question the nature of the human.
In Manifesting the Hidden, Zvarik is joined by Brandon Guerra as the dancers simultaneously explore the relationship between space and bodies. The sand, like the water in the last section of Autumn’s Embrace , is molded by the dancers’ movements as the sand molds them.The composition moves from dancers in balance to snails clinging to rock formations above water to musk and vegetation below, pulling viewers into the inevitable parallels between human and landscape as well as between humans. Above and below are recurrently shown as mirrored images, the camera providing clarity for the underwater shot while distorting the world above. As the audio composition thickens, dancers maintain their rhythm, pushing against a world that accelerates. A cascade of sound repeats, reverbs, extends indefinitely until the third-person point of view is replaced by a dancer’s view: the porosity of the sand, the interlocking of arms, overviews of the surroundings. We cannot help but see ourselves in this landscape, an experience somehow simultaneously grounding and destabilizing.
Finally in Precipice viewers are made to think about our current condition: always cognizant of time, of the acceleration of time, of the speed of commodity culture, travel, and communication. But also of the looming effects of climate change, itself the result of our obsession with controlling nature.
Precipice opens with a Kahlil Gibran poem that underscores the inevitability of our condition as the film captures a river trembling as it runs toward the overwhelming vastness of the sea. As the shot opens, dancers move against the backdrop of an industrial waterfall. The uniformity of the water falling from the dam is a sequence of parallel lines. The choreography mimics this linear motion: dancers hold onto a wooden staff; a draw bridge runs above them. Gibran’s poem prefigures the composition: here water and movement flow only forward, there is no mirroring and no repetition; the tension is of the body against one’s own, of time against space. Even when they dance together, the staff separates even as it connects, not so much body against body, but force against force. At times the forces are in balanced counterweighting one another, but often they are skewed, one pushing the other, shifting their position and reconfiguring their relationship with the environment. Is this how the river feels when it first meets the sea? Pushed and pulled, overtaken and reconfigured?
As the viewpoint slides up, a murmuration of birds echoes across the composition—shifting and adding a new rhythm in image and sound—reminding us that in the Middle Ages, when this term was coined, nature was anthropomorphized and dialogued with us; we sought to understand it as part of our own, parallel to us.
Gomula-Kruzic reminds us that time flows, ebbs, and shifts, it does not go back, but also not linearly forward; it murmurs and trembles giving us the opportunity to move differently: like the river that becomes one with the sea.
Essay by Alice Heeren
UNHEARD
Unheard
Single Channel Video. 3:50 minutes. 2025.
Produced & Directed by Jessica Gomula-Kruzic
Performance by Nicole Zvarik
Choreography by Nicole Zvarik
Audio Design by Sean Clute
Production Assistance by Christopher Gomula-Kruzic
AUTUMN’S EMBRACE
EMBRACE
Autumn’s Embrace
Single Channel Video. 4:16 minutes. 2024.
Produced & Directed by Jessica Gomula-Kruzic
Performance by Nicole Zvarik
Choreography by Nicole Zvarik
Audio Design by Sean Clute
Production Assistance by Christopher Gomula-Kruzic
Precipice
Single Channel Video. 5:49 minutes. 2023.
Produced & Directed by Jessica Gomula-Kruzic
Performances by Nicole Zvarik & Brandon Guerra
Choreography by Nicole Zvarik & Brandon Guerra
Audio Design by Sean Clute
Cinematography by Christopher Gomula-Kruzic
MANIFESTING THE
THE HIDDEN
Manifesting the Hidden
Single Channel Video. 6:36 minutes. 2022.
Produced & Directed by Jessica Gomula-Kruzic
Performances by Nicole Zvarik & Brandon Guerra
Choreography by Nicole Zvarik & Brandon Guerra
Audio Design by Sean Clute
Cinematography by Christopher Gomula-Kruzic
THE SPACE WITHIN
The Spaces Within.
Single Channel Video. 6:03 minutes. 2022.
Produced & Directed by Jessica Gomula-Kruzic
Performances by Nicole Zvarik & Brandon Guerra
Choreography by Nicole Zvarik & Brandon Guerra
Audio Design by Sean Clute
Cinematography by Christopher Gomula-Kruzic
Vignettes
Sploot. Single Channel Video, 2:31 minutes. 2024. Turtles All the Way. Single Channel Video, 2:09 minutes. 2024. Addled. Single Channel Video, 1:44 minutes. 2024. Castaway. Single Channel Video, 4:05 minutes. 2024.
Vignettes
Outdoor Hideaway. Single Channel Video. 0:38 minutes. 2022.
Open Workspace. Single Channel Video. 5:23 minutes. 2022.
Around the Ash Tree. Single Channel Video. 1:42 minutes. 2022.
The Fallen Log. Single Channel Video. 0:45 minutes. 2022.
Backyard Rubble. Single Channel Video. 0:45 minutes. 2022.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
“It’s not enough to do things better, more sustainably, more fairly… we need a new way of understanding our place in the world….”
– Daniel Steegmann Mangrané
Like many people during the COVID lock-down, I began to actively seek outdoor spaces where other people were scarce. The more trees and shrubs and flowers the better - and a stream or river was ideal. This redirected the path of my art making from an exploration of the body to an exploration of the body within wilderness.
My early love of wild spaces began as a young child in upper state New York, as I explored our 42 acres of forest and farmland, my dog as my companion. Now as a mother, I was again exploring wilderness, this time with our pandemic-puppy. I began noticing that the wilderness was never completely wild or untouched, and while wildlife flourished in some spaces, so did the remnants of people - from homeless encampments to trash left by visitors. As I grew to care more and more about these local beautiful spaces and the life within them, I became ever more aware of the globally intensifying biodiversity crisis. My art making began to, and continues to, focus on the question “What kind of a world do we want to live in? And, what kind of world am I leaving for my children to live in?”
As I was creating the media for this show I was struck by how firmly we draw the lines that define the edges of our personal world. How we over simplify other’s lived realities. In truth none of those lines are solid, they are all intersected, broken, and overlaid by countless other paths. They are blurred lines.
A bird seen through a window is entertaining. The same bird flying through an open window is an alarming intruder. But within a birdcage, it becomes a beloved pet.
What happens when we blur the boundary between domestic and wild? How can we acknowledge the wildlife - the synanthropes - we cohabitate with, and honor the crucial roles they play in the functioning of our own world?
In all of these video works, the dynamic relationship between people, wildlife, and wilderness are explored. In the dance performances, this relationship becomes embodied within the dancers. Dance’s universal, nonverbal, and social nature allows it to connect with the viewer on an emotional level. When the complexity of climate change can seem daunting, and the scale of climate change can seem overwhelming, the poetry of dance can reach the viewer on an intimate and personal level.
It is my hope that my video works will inspire empathy for biodiverse areas, and to convey complex environmentalist ideas in a poetic and powerful way. Ultimately, I hope to move the spectator to become an engaged participant, a protagonist for multispecies justice.
Other artist-activists who are leading the way in long-environmentalism include: Subhankar Banerjee, Joyce Hwang, Rulan Tangen, and many many more. You can find more of my own films at www.jgomula.com
CHOREOGRAPHER’S STATEMENT
As a choreographer, my pieces are a collaborative process between the camera, movement and the environment. As I have grown and developed in my choreography, I value the deep listening and play needed to engage with the chosen environment, allowing it to guide my work. Through the lens of the camera, these spaces are transformed into dynamic canvases, allowing both the movement and the environment to converse with one another to portray the space with fresh perspective.
Each piece requires continuous discussion, experimentation, and refinement with the director behind the lens. We have a trio of lens, dancer and environment influencing the intent behind the relationship of body and space. Finding a partner in the twisted limbs of a tree or how sand absorbs the impact of a roll along with the perspective of the lens is considered in movement creation. I approach the sight as an active participant that shapes and is shaped by the dance all the while considering the angle of the shot when developing movement. This dialogue between body, place, and perspective creates a multisensory experience that deepens the intent behind the choreography.
Inspired by the icon choreographers who paved the path of site - specific dance such as Ana Halprin and Pina Bausch. I utilize their concept of play and exploration through deep movement listening and investigation. I am committed to creating work that is both environmentally conscious and artistically transformative, using the medium of dance for camera techniques to foster awareness of our surroundings and inspire reflection on our place within the natural world. Ultimately, my work seeks to prompt viewers to reconsider how we move through and impact the environments around us, encouraging a deeper understanding of the living world that sustains us.
I am thankful for my continuous long standing collaborative relationship with Jessica Gomula - Kruzic as its own dance which always finds a new voice through our special artistic synchronization.
– Nicole Zvarik
JESSICA GOMULA-KRUZIC CV
EDUCATION
Master of Fine Arts, Printmaking, Illinois State University, Normal, IL
Bachelor of Fine Arts, Printmaking, Atlanta College of Art, Atlanta, GA
FILM PRODUCTION
2023 Precipice. Screendance. 455 min. Director and Producer.
2024 FEEDBACK Female Film Festival (FFFF). Los Angeles, CA
2024 Fisheye Film Festival. Buckinghamshire, England, UK.
2023 IMMAGINA Film Festival. Pozzuoli, Italy.
2023 Reel East Texas Film Fest. Kilgore, Texas.
2023 FluxFest. Champlain College Art Gallery. Burlington, Vermont.
2023 Department of Art Faculty Exhibition. Stan State Art Space. Turlock, CA.
2022 Manifesting the Hidden. Screendance. 636 min. Director and Producer.
2023 FLOW Festival. Plantation, FL. Award Winner.
2023 International Migration & Environmental Film Festival. Brandon, Canada.
2023 Nature Without Borders International Film Festival. WRPN Entertainment Network. Award Winner.
2023 Bettiah International Film Festival, Bettiah, Bihar. Award Winner.
2023 WRPN Women’s International Film Festival. Rehoboth Beach, DE. Award Winner.
2023 Mannheim Arts and Film Festival. Mannheim, Germany.
2022 Delight of Hidden Spaces. Faculty Development Center, Stanislaus State. Turlock, CA.
2022 Life Screenings International Short Film Festival. Clermont, FL.
2022 Neum Underwater Film Festival. Neum, Herzegovina. Honorable Mention.
2022 The Spaces Within. Screendance. 6 min. Director and Producer.
2023 Oz Indie Film Festival. St. Kilda, Melbourne, VIC. Nominee.
2023 Sensei Film Fest. Online. Quarter-Finalist.
2023 Cine Paris Film Festival. Paris, France. Award Winner.
2023 Kalakari Film Festival. Dewas, Madhya Pradesh, India.
2023 LOGIHQ International Happiness Film Festival & Exhibition. New Delhi, India.
2023 Mannheim Arts and Film Festival. Mannheim, Germany. Award Winner.
2023 Madonie Film Festival. Sicily, Italy. Award Winner.
2023 The North Film Festival. Stockholm, Stockholm
2023 Kiez Berlin Film Festival. Berlin, Germany. Award Winner.
2023 Berlin Indie Film Festival. Berlin, Germany.
2022 Play Short International Film Awards. Online. Nominee.
2022 Your Way International Film Festival. Paris BKR
2022 17th Cyprus International Film Festival. Larnaca, Cyprus.
2022 Delight of Hidden Spaces. Faculty Development Center, Stanislaus State. Turlock, CA.
2022 Reel East Texas Film Festival. Kilgore, Texas.
2022 Vesuvius International Film Festival. Campania, Italy.
2022 Zensa Media International Film Festival. Montréal, Québec, Canada. Finalist
2022 Mokkho International Film Festival. Pondicherry, India. Award Winner.
2021 The Delight of Mountains. Screendance. 524 min. Director and Producer.
2022 International Fine Art Film Festival, Hollywood, CA.
2022 Delight of Hidden Spaces. Faculty Development Center, Stanislaus State. Turlock, CA.
2022 Samskara International Film Festival, Dehradun, Uttarakhand. Award Winner.
2022 Red Dirt Film Festival, Stillwater, OK.
2021 Sustainable Stories Film Fest. University of Houston Clear Lake Gallery, Houston, TX.
2021 “Ver lo que no se ve” Dance Festival, FIVideodanza. Cuautla, Morelos
2021 RAW. Safehouse for the Arts, San Francisco, CA.
2021 Video Art and Experimental Film Festival, Honorable Mention. New York, NY.
2021 ARTS x SDGS Online Festival. New York, NY.
2021 Mexico City Video Dance Festival. Cerrada Peruggino, Ciudad de México
2021 WRPN Women’s International Film Festival. Nassau, Delaware. Award Winner.
2021 LOGIHQ International Happiness Film Festival & Exhibition. New Delhi, India.
2020 A Place to Train. Screendance. 3 min. Director and Producer.
2022 Delight of Hidden Spaces. Faculty Development Center, Stanislaus State. Turlock, CA. 2021 jellyFEST Film Festival,Semi-finalist. Los Angeles, CA.
2021 Open Screening, Livestream. Artists’ Television Access. San Francisco, CA.
2021 Spotlight Short Film Awards. Atlanta, GA. Award Winner.
2021 Golden State Film Festival. Los Angles, CA.
2020 Avalonia Film Festival, Best Performance Art. Ormond Beach, FL. Award Winner.
2020 Canada Shorts - Canadian & International Short Film Festival. Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. Award.
2020 100 from 10. Stan State Art Place. Turlock, CA.
2020 Portsmouth ShortsCut Film Festival. Portsmouth, United Kingdom.
2020 LAMPA International Film Festival. Perm, Perm Krai, Russia.
2020 3 Minute Film Festival, Santa Barbara, CA.
2020 Action! International Film Festival. Encinitas, CA
2020 Wales International Film Festival. Swansea, Wales.
2020 FLOW Festival. Plantation, FL.
2020 FilmFest by Rogue Dancer. Raleigh, NC.
2020 BonDance International Film Festival, Hizenyumekaidou Ninja village. Saga, Japan.
2020 Asian Cinematography AWARDS (ACA), Quezon City, Philippines.
2018 Mutable Spirals of Ascension. Screendance. 912 min. Director and Producer.
2022 Delight of Hidden Spaces. Faculty Development Center, Stanislaus State. Turlock, CA.
2020 Culver City Film Festival. Shorts Daily, Roku Channel. Marina del Rey, CA. Award Winner.
2020 FilmFest by Rogue Dancer. Raleigh, NC.
2020 100 from 10. Stan State Art Place. Turlock, CA.
2020 Spring Grove International Film Festival. Spring Grove, MN
2020 Star City Film Festival, Waukon, IA.
2019 One-Off Moving Images Festival. Valencia, ES.
2019 One-Off Moving Images Festival. Gol, Norway.
2018 InShort Film Festival. Lagos, Nigeria.
2018 Midpen Media TV, Channel 30. Palo Alto, CA.
2018 Becoming Human. Burlington City Arts Center, Burlington, VT.
2018 35th Scary Cow Film Festival. San Francisco, CA.
2016 Quotidian Mandala. Screendance. 841 min. Director and Producer.
2020 100 from 10. Stan State Art Place. Turlock, CA.
2019 Idaho Screendance Festival, Boise, ID.
2018 Lift-Off Filmmaker Session. Buckinghamshire, UK.
2018 InShort Film Festival. Lagos, Nigeria.
2018 Midpen Media TV, Channel 28. Palo Alto, CA.
2018 Austin Spotlight Film Festival. Austin, TX.
2017 Pembroke Taparelli Arts and Film Festival, Los Angeles, CA.
2017 Cinema New York City. New York, NY.
2017 Best Shorts, La Jolla, CA. Award of Recognition, Women Filmmakers.
2017 Complicit Participants. Turlock, CA.
2016 DOUBLE VISION @ City Hall. Montpelier, VT.
2016 30th Scary Cow Film Festival. San Francisco, CA.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, STANISLAUS
Dr. Britt Rios-Ellis, President
Dr. Richard Ogle, Provost/Vice President of Academic Affairs
Dr. James A. Tuedio, Dean, College of the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
DEPARTMENT OF ART
Martin Azevedo, Associate Professor, Chair
Dean De Cocker, Professor
James Deitz, Lecturer
Daniel Edwards, Associate Professor
Jessica Gomula-Kruzic, Professor
Dr. Alice Heeren, Assistant Professor
Chad Hunter, Lecturer
Dr. Carmen Robbin, Professor
Ellen Roehne, Lecturer
Dr. Staci Scheiwiller, Associate Professor
Susan Stephenson, Associate Professor
Jake Weigel, Associate Professor
Mirabel Wigon, Assistant Professor
Alex Quinones, Instructional Tech II
Matt Hayes, Equipment Technician II
UNIVERSITY ART GALLERIES
Dean De Cocker, Director
Kory Twaddle, Gallery Assistant
SCHOOL OF THE ARTS
Brad Peatross, Graphic Specialist II
Jessica Gomula-Kruzic - Complex Ecologies
March 20–April 29, 2025 | University Art Gallery, California State University, Stanislaus
200 copies printed. Copyright © 2025 California State University, Stanislaus • ISBN 978-1-940753-91-1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the publisher. This exhibition and catalog have been funded by Associated Students Instructionally Related Activities, California State University, Stanislaus.
