Serra Victoria Bothwell Fels “Bad Boundaries”

Catinca Tabacaru

This event has ended.

(Bad boundaries) expected lines misbehaving
(Bad boundaries) pushing through cracks becoming
(Bad boundaries) portals instead of fixed points
(Bad boundaries) solids becoming spills
(Bad boundaries) it’s tautness revisited
(Bad boundaries) it’s tautness revisited
(Bad boundaries) making a problem of being contained
(Bad boundaries) confusing should and won’t, can and don’t

Catinca Tabacaru Gallery presents Bad Boundaries, a solo exhibition by Tennessee artist Serra Victoria Bothwell Fels. This will be the artist’s second solo exhibition with the Gallery.

Bothwell Fels uses principles of magical realism as sculptural directives, fading regular, mundane places into possibilities both dystopic and hopeful––a sense that there is something beyond the physical structures of our everyday environments. One could say that Bothwell Fels actively courts bad boundaries. It’s a rogue approach that gets soupy and stretchy, messy and compiled. There’s an implication of expected action that fails to appear. Or an assumption that there should be nothing where there is something.

Bad boundaries: are happening in ways that anger me.
Bad boundaries: are happening in ways that hearten me.

In a time when extreme boundaries are being drawn, we at Catinca Tabacaru Gallery are looking to make spaces that court an openness to what’s beyond ourselves, to realities outside our expectations.

How do we muddy these waters? Or clear up the silt blocking our view?

SERRA VICTORIA BOTHWELL FELS (B. 1982, USA)

Serra Victoria Bothwell Fels earned her MFA from Columbia University (2016). In the past year, her work has been included in exhibitions at BRIC (Brooklyn, NY), Smack Mellon (Brooklyn, NY), Sun Callery Center for the Arts (Idaho), and Allen Priebe Gallery at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh. In 2019 Bothwell Fels will be in residence at John Michael Kohler Arts Center with a solo exhibition at the Kohler Museum opening in June 2019.