We Were Never Here

Jocelyn Fine, Barbara Ishikura, Brianna Lance, Dana Nechmad, Melanie Vote

July 24 - August 23

Opening Reception: July 24 from 6 to 8 pm

KALINER is pleased to present a group exhibition We Were Never Here featuring works by Jocelyn Fine, Barbara Ishikura, Brianna Lance, Dana Nechmad, and Melanie Vote. This exhibition weaves together five distinct narratives to explore the porous boundary between presence and absence, and the layered simultaneity of time, and being.

Across the exhibition, the artists trace intersecting temporalities—life and death, ritual and myth, growth and decay. The title, We Were Never Here, suggests a spectral duality - a presence that is already vanishing or not yet fully arrived. Rather than following a linear narrative, the exhibition drifts through cycles and returns, where transformation is constant and nothing remains fixed.

Melanie Vote’s delicate works contemplate mortality with quiet reverence, portraying nature in states of both entropy and renewal—where decay becomes a form of generative transformation. In contrast, Barbara Ishikura celebrates the pulse of life itself; her vivid, gestural paintings revel in immediacy, joy, and the unapologetic force of embodiment highlighting the tension between cultural codes. Jocelyn Fine explores the boundary between the visible and the invisible, using anthropomorphic landscapes and layered forms to reflect on fragility, memory, and the blurred line between the material and the spiritual. Dana Nechmad engages with the dualities of repair and rupture, working in embroidery and drawing to examine the body as both a site of pain and healing, and the delicate tension between creation and decay. Brianna Lance draws out the mystical dimension of these cycles, probing the dual nature of time—linear yet looping, seen yet intangible—through surreal compositions that collapse beginnings and endings into one continuous flow.

In her artworks, Barbara Ishikura is addressing the friction between high and low cultural codes, a tension Ishikura experiences personally. Portraiture, historically associated with wealth, elegance, and social prestige, serves as a framework to honor a subject whose presence and individuality challenge traditional notions of who is typically represented. Ishikura treats the subject’s face with a certain traditional care and detail while intentionally rendering the rest of the painting in a rough, clumsy, more exaggerated style. Ishikura’s drawings often center on young women whose presence radiates unapologetic confidence. Cigarettes, Dunkin' Donuts coffee, expressive hands contribute to a sense of grounded power. This aesthetic contrast—between refinement and awkwardness—acts as a disruption. Ishikura’s work creates a space where elegance and vulgarity, precision and mess, coexist without apology.

Jocelyn Fine’s paintings reflect an on ongoing exploration of fragility, memory, and impermanence, echoing themes of preservation and decay. The natural world provides a bridge between the cycle of life- what once was, and what is now. Inspired by the connection between the material world and the unseen forces that shape our experiences, Fine’s paintings personify non-human entities with human characteristics as a way to explore identity and illustrate how much we share with nature.

Fine’s work is meant to pull the viewer in and out of the invisible (imaginary) and the visible (material) world through layering and varying degrees of opacity and translucency; which is meant to demonstrate a shifting in and out of reality from one state to another. In her painting entitled “ What Lies Beneath the Skin”, she is exploring this idea of what we can see in nature versus what is beyond human sight. Through her work, she is trying to reveal what is beyond our vision.

The predominant themes in Melanie Vote’s work center on time, ecology, and the ephemeral nature of existence. Vote’s layered compositions often carry a haunting resonance. Her work serves as a meditation on impermanence and the transitory nature of human presence. She reminds us that our lives are fleeting, we are temporal, and confronts the inevitability of death—not as an end, but as the Great Unifier—while emphasizing that time moves swiftly and life is brief. Through this lens, her paintings examine what remains and what disappears, probing the deeper question: what traces will we leave behind? At its core, her practice explores existence as a state of continuous metamorphosis—where change is the only constant, and permanence is an illusion.

The series of works by Dana Nechmad intertwines embroidery and drawing on paper in a deeply intimate way. This fusion of mediums allows her to explore the emotional and symbolic resonance of both the materials and the imagery she creates. Each piece is a continuation of an ongoing inner landscape narrative, where the tactile quality of the threads and the fluidity of the drawn marks interact, deepening the meaning of both. Through these works, she addresses themes of motherhood, femininity, decay, and the power struggles embedded in personal and collective experiences. The thread itself becomes a metaphor for connection, fragility, and endurance, while the drawn images bring to life complex emotional and psychological states.

“I enjoy working with paper, it is a delicate and intimate material, yet also very unforgiving; once a hole is made, it remains. I appreciate the quiet, dramatic effect of it.”

-Dana Nechmad

In her paper-based work, Nechmad navigates between polarities, drawing images figuratively while also engaging with them in an abstract way that challenges and complicates their meaning. Nechmad believes her method of mark-making serves as a powerful metaphor for life. From the moment we are born, we start to create and decay. Our existence is always defined by this duality, and in her practice, she aims to visually and physically mimic that aspect.

Brianna Lance brings a mystical lens to the exhibition, offering symbolic works that tap into spiritual archetypes and unseen forces, evoking realms beyond the physical. Lance’s work deals with the nature of time. Though we perceive time as linear it is proven not to be. The ants eating the cherry, then decomposing and feeding more plants, the flower eating its own stem so there is no beginning or end dictates this possible loop we are in.

“So what is the actual nature of time and what does it look like, a loop, infinity?”

-Brianna Lance

Together, the works in We Were Never Here explore a world shaped by duality—where presence and absence, growth and decay, material and spirit, and linearity and collapse intersect in continuous transformation. These tensions unfold across bodies, landscapes, and imagined realms, revealing that life and death are not fixed opposites but mirrored states within a larger continuum—flowing through us, dissolving boundaries, and echoing beyond the visible.