ART364B - Kate Clark
Note: Over the next seven months nanomajority will feature the women of ART364B in seven separate monthly installments. As her contribution to the project, Kate Clark provides a statement on her practice, as well as a photo gallery of her sculptures.
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Artist's Statement
Studying the tension between personal and mythical realms, I create sculpture that synthesizes the human face into the body of wild animals. Initially, these forms can be shocking and repelling as viewers both recognize and reject their presence. The disruptive alignment of the intimate face and animal body asserts that human experience is mostly contained, a mask which is incomprehensible and psychologically complex.
We bring assumptions to any contemplation of the wild. We project unease, a response to what we understand to be primitive, unrestrained, even dangerous.
The tamed face, our face, is a mirror reflecting safety and cultivation. Emotion is caught in the eyes, the mouth, the tilt of the head. A single life, with its private and unique history, gazes back at us.
The visible seams themselves are there to remind the viewer that I’ve undone the exotic and wild to construct portraits which ask you to embrace contradiction. One can seek out themselves in the vulnerability of expression, while confronting a shifting and uncertain relationship: underlying violence beneath a guise of control.
Comments
Love your work in progress series. Makes me think about 2D (relief) v 3 D. Keep going, Maria
I wish all the folks who had written me about the power of these works came here to post, as it would be an interesting inventory. There is no question, this body of work is evocative, challenging, and even shocking. They fall into that category of art for me that is so seamless as to wonder how it was done in the first place. Having the advantage of knowing the artist, the story on how she arrived at the method is nearly as interesting as the art, and took many dedicated, fastidious, and perhaps even obsessive hours experimenting.
There has been talk about the formal elements of presentation. For me, they are entirely secondary considerations. I don't feel like the bases detract, nor do I think they add. They are entirely supplemental--it's the bodies themselves in space that matter. For me, the relationship between them as a group is really amazing. I particularly loved a group shown at a gallery in which a pack of animals was caught in space, running towards the viewer. That tension really pushes these for me and I'd like to see that more in the wall mounted pieces.
There is a wonderful and eerie quality in this work-the play between human and animal. We read these qualities in animals, but rarely want to acknolwedge this in our human selves. I have been looking and thinking about your work for a long time. The essential poetry that is conveys has always been the primary strength here. There is an iconic quality, and your sculptural groups really bring this dynamic home. We see how we interact with each other, as it is conveyed in the group.
There is also the concern here of what is real, what is fake? The piece are so real, melding the material to the content. There is something other worldly about these creatures, that cannot be ignored.