NYAB Event - Keltie Ferris “Body Prints”

Keltie Ferris “Body Prints”

Chapter NY

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Chapter NY presents Body Prints, a new discrete body of work by the artist Keltie Ferris.

Initiated during a summer residency, this series is a measured change in approach from her painting practice of large-scale, colorful abstractions. Ferris created this new intimate body of work by pressing her oiled body against paper on the studio floor after which she drags powdered pigment along the paper, revealing her imprint. Through the converting of a three-dimensional body into the flatness of the surface, combined with the inherent limitations of variations within that form, the images are suggestive of photocopies, photographs or even X-rays.

Body imprints are seen as far back as 30,000 BCE in cave paintings at Chauvet, and more recently in Yves Klein’s theatrical works, sculpture studies by Jasper Johns, and David Hammons weighted body prints. While inspired by all three, Ferris is always grounded in painting, conscious of composition, mark-making and space, yet at the same time removing any sense of a narrative. Though the physicality of the process is very much performative, it’s done alone without assistance or audience.

Simultaneously an investigation into self-portraiture and signature, these highly personal works on paper touch upon the often ambiguous identification and depiction of the body. Through these individual images we find Ferris and her multitude of forms: each an iterations of self and all the form of fission, sexual yet reserved, blurred though defined.

Keltie Ferris was born in Kentucky and lives and works in Brooklyn. Solo exhibitions include Santa Monica Museum of Art, Lost Angeles, CA; Kemper Museum, Kansas City, MO and Mitchell-Innes and Nash New York, NY. In addition, her paintings have been included in group exhibition at The Contemporary Art Museum in Houston, TX; The Addison Gallery, Andover, MA; The Nerman Museum,, Overland Park KS and the Indianapolis Museum of Art in Indiana.