NYAB Event - Kathleen White “(A) Rake’s Progress”

Kathleen White “(A) Rake’s Progress”

Momenta Art

This event has ended.

The exhibition, (A) Rake’s Progress, is comprised of the complete polymorphichrome drawings produced by Ms. White outdoors in the summer of 2009. The cycle of pastels on paper, a progression numbering 71 works, were created in remembrance of Ms. White’s late brother Chris White.

Chris’s suicide of 2007 was unreconcilable. Gripped by the shadow of loss, I spent a year studying the colors in my Ludlow Street courtyard —the wild garden was transformed from a derelict garbage heap by Rafael and myself. Knowing also that the garden would soon be lost to the high rents plaguing our city -as “the lost decade”, “the fear decade”, “the greed decade” turned 9 -this physical exploration of color through its endless grinding, its proliferating combinations and intense contact onto the page is at once a stance of grace and defiance against the all the world’s insults.

The “glut” of information which prevails over the pursuit of knowledge and feeling in modern times is of particular distress to Ms. White who often utilizes the phrase, “Get out of the way, hobo!” to refer to the state of our present culture’s pervasive, implosive, subtly celebrated, corrosion of empathy. As in the artist’s earlier installations over the past three decades this presentation is in keeping with Ms. White’s practice of creating spaces of reverence, connection and love.

The choice of the pastels was made during a conversation with Mr. Sánchez, “I want this to be an installation of color and sound.” The two artists who have collaborated on numerous acclaimed projects looked to this body of work that has lain dormant for five years. The inclination toward sound comes from a more recent body of work by Ms. White, Sound Texts, which will be represented by the recorded sounds of her instrument of choice during their production: the typewriter.

This “allusion soundtracking” of one group of work with another is an intentional experiment in creating a conversation that might not otherwise exist but through its performance in time and space. The bodies of work are thus considered as characters or beings unto themselves …bodies that are allowed to engage as in a play. The gesture is also intended as a commingling of aspects through pure intention in their simplest forms: “Here …these colors and these sounds.” The Sound Texts will be performed on site by readers on the last day of the show, Sunday August 31.

The show’s title, (A) Rake’s Progress is a multilayered reference to the 1732-33 series of paintings by William Hogarth, (considered to be one of the first storyboards in western art history). The inclusion of an actual rake within the installation refers to the garden where the polymorphichrome drawings were created and thus also serving as a readymade reversal on Hogarth’s tale, signifying the passage of time. A twist on the rake as not only the individual lost in their desires is also suggested, offering the possibility of the rake as a symbol of the world itself that proceeds in an escalating progression of squandered morals.