Cathleen Clarke “Whatever Hour You Woke There Was a Door Shutting”

Fou Gallery

Poster Design: Yizhi Liu

This event has ended.

Curator: Lynn Hai

Fou Gallery presents Cathleen Clarke’s solo exhibition: Whatever Hour You Woke There Was a Door Shutting. The exhibition will present Clarke’s 16 oil paintings, mostly created in 2020 and 2021. Clarke seeks for inspiration from old photos and used objects. She is interested in the buried but unfading memories that awaken a common nostalgia of treasuring one’s past. Clarke’s contrast colors and flowing composition in her paintings capture the viewer’s attention with implicitness and mysteriousness. Through dramatically expressed daily scenes, her paintings seem to hide many untold but vivid stories under the moments frozen on her canvas.

Clarke is greatly influenced by the literature of the stream of consciousness. She depicts sentimental moments with non-linear narration, and thus creates plenty of flexibility to arouse the viewer’s multitudinous thoughts and to resonate with the concurrence of their sensations. Faces with ambiguous expressions, empty rooms with used and worn-out items, and aimless moments in a lively occasion with many participants, are usually representative images in her paintings.

Clarke gained her Bachelor of Fine Art in Painting and Drawing at the Academy of Art University, San Francisco in 2014. She now works and lives in Brooklyn, New York. Clarke had her first solo show If You Ever Make it Home in San Francisco in 2014. From 2011 to present, her works have been widely exhibited in San Francisco, Chicago and New York. She was selected to attend the NARS Foundation International Artist Residency in 2019, and took part in the virtual exhibition Speculative Interiors by NARS Foundation in 2020. The exhibition Cathleen Clarke: Whatever Hour You Woke There Was a Door Shutting at Fou Gallery is her first solo show in New York.