Kathleen Kucka

"Beneath the Surface"

May 20-June 28, 2014

Opening Reception:Tuesday, May 20, 6-9pm

Press Release

Gallery Geranmayeh is pleased to announce its first New York solo exhibition of new works by Kathleen Kucka. The show will feature a selection of paintings and works on paper.

Since the early 1990’s, Kucka has been investigating and working with the process of mark making and abstraction. Returning to the process of burning canvas and paper, she makes marks that cannot be erased or reversed, exploring the burn as a metaphor of destruction and change.

Kucka’s work, with its interplay of materials, presents the viewer with a layered experience and visual depth. Beneath the complex surface, Kucka displays a lively use of colored fabrics inhabiting the space below. The paintings appear to shift in focus between the various layers. These new compositions are the result of the artist’s focusing on the relationship between organic image and process.

In a new work titled “Flapper,” 2014, Kucka allows for a three dimensional extension coming out from the canvas. This piece directs the viewer’s attention to the canvas as an animated element in the work.

The drawings all share a fluid, organic sensibility. The sequence of crescent burns in “Burn Thru #8” flutters like feathers in a fiery sky of red and black. Kucka’s discernible crayon marks are evidence of yet another engagement with the surface.

Ellen J. Keiter, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Katonah Museum of Art, writes in her essay about the artist’s work: “Kathleen Kucka’s exploration of materials and mark-making has led her on a decades-long journey. She has remained steadfast in her formal investigations. Her burns, whether on canvas or paper, compose complex, lyrical compositions that ultimately revel in the process of their creation. Like Gutai, who championed “a willful rite of destruction to yield something new,” Kucka deconstructs the canvas to reveal its intrinsic beauty and potential as an art object itself. She engages simply and wholly in the process of her art.”

Kathleen Kucka lives and works in New York City. She holds a M.F.A. from Hunter College, Graduate School of Art in New York, and her B.F.A. from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York. Kucka’s work is in the collections of the Birmingham Museum of Art; The Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach; Museum of Modern Art, Franklin Furnace Archives, among others.

A catalogue with essay by Ellen J. Keiter has been made for the exhibition.

This is Gallery Geranmayeh’s inaugural show in their new space in New York.

Exhibition Catalog

Image: Burn Thru 3-31-14,8:29, 2014, Burns On Canvas, 50h x 50w in