Open Mind Art Space is pleased to present Parts and Motions, a solo exhibition featuring contemporary works by Los Angeles-based artist Katie Kirk. An opening reception for the artist will be held on Saturday, August 18th at 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM. The exhibition will be on view from August 18th through September 14th, 2018.
Parts and Motions is a collection of recent paintings and ceramics by artist Katie Kirk which celebrate the body, difference, and materiality. Created using an array of materials and methods, each piece is an exercise in creating a whole from parts. Kirk creates corporeal forms that straddle the boundaries between sculpture, painting, and object. Each work in the exhibition is both art and artifact. Through the process of creation, the works become a physical record of the artist’s movements.
With painting, as much as ceramics, there is a physical and performative act of art production. In her colorful painted works, Kirk layers and stacks acrylic, oil, vinyl, ink, glazed ceramic, and dried paint “skins” on canvas and paper, defying the notion that painting is purely image. Pouring, stacking, monoprinting, and collaging the paints creates many complex layers of colors, shapes, and textures, activating the surfaces of the painted works. The heightened physicality of the paint takes them out of the second dimension and into the third.
Parts and Motions also features a variety of intimate ceramic works that are in complementary dialogue with the paintings. For Kirk, the division between ceramics and paintings is simply a formality. Several of the ceramic works are from Kirk’s ongoing series of “pile” sculptures that consist of multiple ceramic tubes arranged to create organic forms, which she refers to as linear drawings. The fluid use of material is especially evident in her piece titled Multi-Color Spine – with spreading out, which Kirk made by spreading out clay on the floor using different parts of her body. Finger and foot impressions, along with textures and cracks from the clay and glaze, emphasize the artist’s already ever-present body. The finished flattened pieces are displayed on the wall alongside Kirk’s layered paintings, giving viewers equal access to view their intricate details up close. With this constant and consistent entanglement of mediums and layering techniques, each piece provides a physical, psychological and optical experience as a whole, yet they are intended to be perceived as more than the sum of their parts.
Katie Kirk is an artist living and working in Los Angeles. She works primarily in painting, monoprinting, and ceramics, and explores ideas about pleasure and the role of pleasure in art and life. Her work is deeply connected to exploring the human body and all its capacity. Katie received a BA in Film and Television Production from Loyola Marymount University and an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of The Art Institute of Chicago.
Event cover image: “Blue Squiggling and Gold Dots” by Katie Kirk, 2018, acrylic and pen on canvas, 30 x 40 inches (76.2 x 101.6 cm)
More information at: https://www.artsy.net/show/open-mind-art-space-parts-and-motions
