NYAB Event - Alisha Kerlin "Cat and Mouse"

Alisha Kerlin "Cat and Mouse"

Real Fine Arts

This event has ended.

For this exhibition, Kerlin has made a series of paintings depicting failed games of Solitaire. The series is based upon actual games, which the artist lost, photographed, and then painted. In this curious approach, the autonomous nature of painting is called into play. Kerlin’s project makes a comparison between the series of moves involved in the game of Solitaire and the painterly moves made in the studio. Choosing to paint the unsuccessful games, Kerlin invites a dialog surrounding the notion of a stalemate. In short, the artist makes failure into a new kind of sport.

In addition, Kerlin will present an ongoing series of digital prints, each with it’s own group of frames, depicting a single living subject; a sleepy Bare Eye Cockatoo, which has been living at a pet store on the upper west side for the entire year that the artist has been photographing it. Each print presents a "set" or "group" with its own feeling: The bird is waking up, or falling asleep; caught in a loop that the artist has purposefully presented out of sequence. As with the paintings, these images begin to uncover that mysterious space between inspiration and execution, sinking deeper into a narrative of potentially conflictive reads, which becomes a central theme of the exhibition.

Cat and Mouse posits a conflict in which neither party can win. Kerlin implicates the viewer in the process of creating meaning. The viewer stands in for the player or mouse, just as the works become the cat, and vice versa. The mouse is asked to reflect on the logjam that is built into the formal and contextual foundation of the work. The lonesome activity that is suggested by Solitaire, and the solitary presentation of the bird, creates a situation that invites the viewer to be an active participant. In this way, autonomy as a theme begins to dissolve.

Media

• Painting
• Prints

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