Incise, Echo and Repeat
Curated by Camilla Fallon and Kylie Heidenheimer, The Clemente Abrazo Gallery, 2019
Curated by Camilla Fallon and Kylie Heidenheimer, The Clemente Abrazo Gallery, NYC, January 25th - March 2nd, 2019
Artists Joanne Carson, Susanna Coffey, Elisabeth Condon, Camilla Fallon, Kylie Heidenheimer, Pinkney Herbert, Mary Jones, Laura Newman, Amy Mahnick, Sirikul Pattachote, Walter Schrank, Clintel Steed & Mie Yim
The painting exhibition Incise, Echo & Repeat was selected in a call for proposals by a jury of New York City artist, gallery and museum professionals. The show immersed viewers in worlds that ranged from loose to taut in feeling. Thirteen artists, via as many means, engaged schist-like to explosive fracturing as visual tools in their work. Compositions buttressed stained glass, gem-cut and scaffold atmospheres. Visual rifts girded bricolaged forms, found-fabric environs, and vertical and horizontal space-times. Chiseling and breaks were inherent to figuration, fractured still life and that suggestive of nature. The Clemente’s Abrazo Gallery is located in the Lower East Side’s former PS 160. The latter elementary school was designed utilizing utopian principles by Frederick Snyder. The artworks at times, seemed to echo the paint-cracked niches of this turn-of-the-century behemoth.
See Incise Exhibition Support Materials (next tab) for press release, online catalog and exhibition panel podcast.
Incise Exhibition Support Materials
Press Release, online exhibition catalog & podcast of panel discussion moderated by David Cohen
Press Release, online exhibition catalog & podcast of panel discussion moderated by David Cohen with panelists Elisabeth Condon, Mary Jones, Any Mahnick, Clintel Steed
Panel discussion moderated by David Cohen, with co-curators Camilla Fallon and Kylie Heidenheimer, panelists Elisabeth Condon, Mary Jones, Amy Mahnick and Clintel Steed, exhibition participants JoAnne Carson, Susanna Coffey, Pinkney Herbert, Laura Newman, Walter Schrank and Sirikul Pattachote, and audience participants. February, 2019.
Katharine Umsted Sculpture & Works on Paper
A micro-survey of Umsted’s Shields, Body Armor, charcoal pieces and installation work, The Upstate Studio, Hudson, NY, Summer 2015.
A micro-survey of artist Katharine Umsted’s target shields and glorified, pigmented body armor(latter viewable at kumsted.com). Arcadian charcoal landscapes, inspired by family land also became local on show walls. A massive-but-airy mobile installation of wire and shaped children’s clothes which pointed to Sandy Hook hovered above. Curated by Kylie Heidenheimer. The Upstate Studio, Hudson, NY, July 31st - August 8th, 2015.
See Umsted Exhibition Support Materials (next tab) for written exhibition Q&A between Katharine Umsted and Kylie Heidenheimer.
Umsted Exhibition Support Materials
Kylie Heidenheimer interviews Katharine Umsted in a written artist Q & A. On the occasion of Umsted’s exhibition at The Upstate Studio.
Q & A in connection with the 2015 solo exhibition, Katharine Umsted, Sculpture & Works on Paper, a micro survey curated by Kylie Heidenheimer, Upstate Studio, Hudson, NY.
KH You mentioned the Sandy Hook shootings and children’s spirits rising to the heavens in connection with your new work. The pieces are made from children’s clothing and airily suspend from the ceiling. Your earlier BREAST PLATE, SHIELDS and ARMOR works are about protection and vulnerability. These concerns certainly apply here. Do they remain primary motivations in the making of the pieces?
KU Yes, motivations for this work still comes from those places. The ARMOR series is about the futility of efforts we take to protect ourselves from death. It is made out of stupid materials; paper, ribbon strips, plaster and gauze. These things are not going to protect anyone. Additionally, the metal hardware shows a tough outer appearance, but has sharp, dangerous elements facing inward toward the wearer.
KH The BREAST PLATE and CHAIN MAIL DRESS series were created using mannequins. Accordingly, I see these pieces in part as being about archetypes and symbols. The current work does not seem to build on these kinds of elements. It also does not seem to reflect the polar tact of your TIARA series where you place finished wire works in the middle of Broadway in order for trucks to flatten them! Can you describe what led to this current direction? It seems to be about neither establishing or smashing symbols and archetypes.
KU I think of the current work as oscillating back and forth between the personal and the general. The Tiaras are in a way, related to the clothing pieces. When I first started making the Tiaras, I was thinking about little girls fantasizing that they were princesses. Reality then knocks the tiaras off their heads. The Breast Plates were as you say, formed on mannequins. No way was I going to use my body!!! Initially they were whole, but later pieces were cut open. The most recent Shields, which have targets on the front, are totally beaten up. But on the inside, there is fluffy pink or lavender fabric. With the Chain Mail dresses I originally made them with my body in mind, and they were meant to hang flat. They were small shapeless rectangles at first, so I kept tweaking the pattern until I got a sexy, girly outline. They end up as “come hither” but ready for danger. And, again, the “chain mail” is not actually joined metal rings but pink or lavender curling ribbon that is sprayed with silver paint.
KH So the minimizing of archetypes in the new work is a move away from a focus on what might be considered humanity and its traits and a move toward the personal and possibly also the political?
KU I think the new work is more personal. The landscape drawings are of a place where I lived as a kid. I went back a few years ago, and absolutely all signs of human life on our family’s farm were gone. The house and barns were razed and nature had reclaimed everything. I think of my watercolor target pieces as bruises. They are hung vertically and mirror the shape of a torso. Politically speaking, I think when I believe I am making things from a personal standpoint, they in turn mirror our vulnerable place in the world, as a country and as humans, politically and environmentally.
Katharine Umsted was born in Rhode Island and raised in South Carolina and Illinois. She currently lives and works in New York City and Hudson, New York. She holds a BA from The College of Charleston and MFA from the School of Visual Arts.
Kylie Heidenheimer is a painter who lives and works in New York City.
Contact Information for Katharine Umsted:
kumstedart[at]gmail[dot]com; www[dot]kumsted[dot]com