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This work was inspired by the philosopher Jergen Habermas and his concept of the "Colonization of the Lifeworld" where culture, meaning and value are colonized by the instrumental rationality of the modern marketplace system. In this sense what is irrational is subject to what might be falsely rational.

She exhibited in the 2008 Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Bay Area Now 5 and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Bronx Museum, New Langton Arts, The Luggage Store Gallery, Headlands Center for the Arts, The Lab and Mag:net Gallery Katipunan in Manila.

Togonon Gallery is pleased to present five Bay Area artists seeking new means of expression and breaking new ground through the use of paper and mixed media installations, newly exhibited in the gallery as Prints on the Edge. Curated by Hanna Regev, the artists in the exhibition include Eva Gabrielov, Constance (Connie) Harris, Justin Hoover, Lisa Kokin and Kazuko Watanabe. The artists employ techniques which range from the use of traditional intaglio prints to the unconventional knitted copper wire pressed into paper, “smoked shadows” on marble and paper, and reassembled books that weave text and memory by a complex system of destruction and preservation.

Ewa Gabrielov combines digitally created imagery with traditional printmaking methods, such as etching and monotype. Her prints are an exploration of basic elements such as line, shape and form with an added complexity of manipulating other properties such as size, color, and texture. Gavrielov has earned a bachelor of Architecture & Town Planning from the Technion Institute of Technology in Israel and a Graphic design diploma from the Art Institute of Boston. She studied printmaking at Aurobora Press, San Francisco, Kala Art Studios, Berkeley, San Jose ICA and Pacific Art League in Palo Alto.

 Connie Harris has been exploring different types of "languaging" that is both structural and habitual. For the past twenty three years she has utilized various forms of installation, sculpture, painting, printmaking, mixed media and interactive

Justin Hoover’s series of work, titled $ick, is an experimental print series using "smoke shadows" on marble and paper. This technique is one that he has pioneered over the last few years and involves the accumulation of smoke on a surface to create a duo-toned print. This body of work depicts portraits of 16 of the top U.S. corporate executives who have been charged/convicted of fraud or corruption. Hoover’s use of materials reference institutional wealth and corruption, smoke and mirrors, the defamation of Wall Street and the new legacies of shame belonging to the architects of the financial institutions’ collapse.

Hoover is a Bay Area born artist, and curator. Among other projects, he is the founder and director of The Garage; An Alternative Space, and of the Garage Biennale, an experimental exhibition series. He holds a Masters of Fine Arts Degree in New Genres, received from the San Francisco Art Institute.

Lisa Kokin alters books, text and memory through a complex system of destruction and preservation. There is as much meaning in what has been taken away as in what remains. Through her process of art making, Lisa is able to explore cultural and personal issues of conformity and gender, the ambiguities of society, and the behavior of humans. Her current series of “reassembled” books, Kokin literally reshapes the content of selected old books by making papier-m’chÈ balls, organ-like objects and cubes out of the shredded pages, then sews the contents back inside and outside of the original book covers. Bits and pieces of the original text remain, although the literal meaning is lost. The covers no longer contain their unruly "text," and their form comes to define the content.

Kokin's work has been exhibited in the United States as well as abroad, and is in numerous collections. She is a recipient of a California Arts Council Individual Artist’s Fellowship and Eureka Fellowship from the Fleishhacker Foundation, Kokin’s work is in numerous public and private collections. She received her BFA and MFA from the California College of the Arts.

Kazuko Watanabe is noted for her multiple color intaglio prints; these meticulously crafted pieces require inordinate amounts of time and patience for this particular medium. She handles these stubborn metallic plates with great ease and subtlety; fantastic craftsmanship that is employed to generate the beautiful abstract compositions and delicate color gradations, of which the viewer is often unaware of.

Watanabe is a graduate of the San Francisco Academy of Art University and has taught classes on printmaking at both the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley and the California State University, Hayward. Watanabe is the recipient of the 1999 Library Fellows Award from the National Museum of Women in the Arts Foundation in Washington D.C. for the “Diary of a Sparrow."