Friend of a Friend is pleased to announce Fiction Folly featuring Rian Kerrane (Denver), Em Kettner (Richmond, CA) and Aitor Lajarin-Encina (Fort Collins). Each artist explores themes of transformation, materiality, and human connection through their distinct artistic approaches. Kettner’s delicate glazed tile drawings examine the intimacy of support systems, while Kerrane’s cast metal sculptures elevate everyday objects, and Lajarin-Encina’s layered works offer a critical lens on contemporary life. Together, their work challenges how we perceive and interact with the world, inviting viewers to reconsider the seemingly familiar in unexpected ways.

Rian Kerrane (b. 1968, Galway, Ireland) applies cast and fabricated sculpture, site specificity, installation and printmaking as methodologies to examine the critical interconnection between social, environmental and personal themes. Kerrane deliberately incorporates commonplace or industrial objects alongside highbrow traditional art materials. Cultural conformity shifts and evolves, and reflection on the tropes of society sway her interest in upcycling and reuse. For her the studio and gallery are a laboratory for a kind of pseudo-science and a physicalized celebration and critique of late modern culture. Kerrane received her BA in Fine Arts Degree from the University of Ulster at Belfast she earned her MFA from the University of New Orleans, Louisiana. Currently residing in Denver, Colorado, Kerrane is Professor in the Visual Arts Department at the University of Colorado Denver. Maintaining strong connections to Ireland, she runs a study abroad summer program at the Burren College of Art in County Clare. Her work shows nationally and internationally with exhibitions in Germany, Latvia, Italy, Austria, Mexico and Ireland. Rwanda, Northern Ireland, Columbia, Ukraine, Brazil, Japan, and Wales are some of her far-ranging exhibits with the Artnauts collective. A board member for the Western Cast Iron Art Alliance since 2008, Kerrane also contributed to curating and steering with the International Conference in Contemporary Cast Iron Art (ICCCIA) in Latvia in 2014, Scranton, Pennsylvania in 2018 and Berlin in 2022.

Self-defined as a contemporary archeologist I am consistently attracted to detritus and drawn to worn and abandoned elements from our consumer culture. My value system is at odds with most and I accrue stores of bygone architectural and domestic items, textiles, plastics, metal, wood, etc. Dare I class myself as an archivist? As a fabricator I comprehend how things are manufactured, whether by machine or by hand, and have a deep respect for human ingenuity, craft, and design.  This personal history and approach stem from building early sculptures over thirty years ago with residual metal sourced in cold bonfire sites and on worksites in Ireland alongside a childhood steeped in archeological history. The amalgamation of my past is integral to my valuing, collecting, and representing the discarded remnant in a gallery context. Sentiments of narrative exist to involve viewers in decoding the assembled work.

Em Kettner (b. 1988, Philadelphia, PA) is an artist and writer based in Richmond, CA. Recent solo exhibitions include Homebound at François Ghebaly Gallery (New York, NY), Sick Joke at Chapter NY (New York, NY), Slow Poke at François Ghebaly Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), The Eternal Worm at HARPY (Rutherford, NJ), and Play the Fool at Goldfinch (Chicago, IL). She’s participated in two-person and group exhibitions at Pipeline (London, UK), Outer Space (Concord, NH), the MFA (Boston, MA), Form & Concept (Santa Fe, NM), Winter Street Gallery (Edgartown, MA), Candice Madey (New York, NY), and Et al. Gallery (San Francisco, CA), among others. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; the Ohana Center, Monterey, CA; the DePaul Art Museum and The Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection, both Chicago, IL. Kettner’s work has been reviewed and published in Cultured Magazine, ArtForum, Art in America, Sculpture Magazine, Contemporary Art Review LA (CARLA), HyperAllergic, Institutional Model, and Sixty Inches From Center. In 2023, Fulcrum Arts produced her interactive digital storybook, “Doctor, Doctor,” an illustrated journey through history, myth, and patient-hood. Em Kettner earned her BFA from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is represented by François Ghebaly Gallery in Los Angeles and New York.

My sculptures, tapestries, and drawings explore the ties that bind us—family, friendship, and the ever-expanding web of human connection. In these new glazed tile drawings, that thread unravels, revealing fragmented moments that blur time and memory. A peaceful summer scene of friends floating in a firefly-lit pond subtly shifts as a glowing insect transforms into a distant meteor, an impending force of destruction. Each tile, embedded in cherry planks, distorts the surrounding wood, allowing the image to seep beyond its edges. Inspired by votive offerings, these miniature works demand close inspection, inviting viewers to peer through a keyhole at an uncertain future where serenity and catastrophe exist side by side.

Aitor Lajarin-Encina (b. 1977, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Basque Country,Spain) is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and organizer born in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Basque Country, Spain, in 1977. He is currently working in Fort Collins, Colorado. He received his BFA in painting from the University of Basque Country, Bilbao, and his MFA in visual arts from the University of California, San Diego. Recent shows include “Crickets” at the Heritage Square Museum in Los Angeles and “Tarta Tatlin” at Universidad de las Americas in Puebla, Mexico or “La perspectiva” at Artnueve gallery in Spain and “Piano Room” at the Neutra House in Los Angeles. He is cofounder and co- director of DXIX Projects, an initiative for production and dissemination of contemporary culture and art-related projects and materials initiated in Los Angeles, California, in 2015 and based now in Fort Collins, Colorado. Recent curatorial projects include exhibitions such as “6 Flag BBQ” with artist Ruben Ortiz-Torres as a part of the Pacific Standard Time Los Angeles program, “Co/Lab” at Torrance Art Museum, and “Micrologies” at Scharaun in Berlin, Germany and at Harvard University in Boston and Irenic Projects, Los Angeles. Aitor has taught painting, drawing, and interdisciplinary studio classes at UC San Diego and UDLAP in Puebla, Mexico. He is currently an assistant professor in painting in the department of art and art history at Colorado State University, where he teaches painting courses and socially engaged courses.

My paintings are visual poems that invite viewers into moments of existential suspense, prompting reflection on life, relationships, and the environment. They explore the history and complexities of pictorial representation, blending references from baroque art to video games to examine modernity, subjectivity, and cultural anxieties. Combining sensual textures with layered semiotic meaning, these works celebrate the physicality of painting while challenging perceptions of truth and representation. Through rich surfaces of drips, splatters, and tactile depth, they create a space for critical engagement—both a feast for the eyes and an open-ended inquiry into the nature of interpretation.