Catharine Clark Gallery opens its Fall 2019 program with “Whatever I See I Swallow,” Katherine Vetne’s debut solo exhibition with the gallery. Vetne’s newest sculptures and drawings expand on themes of desire, consumption, and mainstream womanhood that were at-play in her acclaimed, site-specific installation “Guilty Pleasure,” which was previously exhibited in the gallery’s 2018 summer group exhibition, “We Tell Ourselves Stories…In Order To Live.” Made from over 70 pieces of melted Avon lead crystal, Vetne’s installation raised questions about how we perceive the value of heirlooms and decorative objects, by transforming formerly useful vessels into amorphous, non-functional forms that, through multiple interventions, are reimagined as works of art.
Vetne’s exhibition is accompanied by a Media Room presentation of “Eldorado Wallpaper” (2013), an animated projected video by German-born artist Brigitte Zieger. Zieger’s animation resembles an historical flocked wallpaper of a forest or jungle scene, rendered in neon green. Seemingly static at first glance, Zieger’s “wallpaper” quietly animates figures as they begin to emerge and disappear throughout the composition. Like Vetne, Zieger challenges the idea that decorative arts’ traditions are “neutral,” by exploring how these forms can be vehicles for larger commentaries on topics such as manifest destiny and environmental precarity.
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