The Green Gallery is thrilled to announce our participation at Paris Internationale in a shared presentation with Misako & Rosen Gallery. A new series of paintings by Katy Cowan will debut alongside new work by Miki Mochizuka. Celebrated for her sculptures and drawings, this will be Cowan’s first public exhibition of paintings. Here, the figure becomes a grounding element for which energizing color and mark reverberate across the surface. These works offer access into the artist’s formal logic and process.
Cowan’s placement and pose of the figure are derived from her environment in Berlin. Drawing from bodies moving through the city as well as impressions of sculpture of the human form; the artist begins with approximations that structure the work's compositional movement. An array of spray painted applications follow, as the works build through loose accumulation. Echoed by Cowan’s controlled use of oil, her directional mark making determines the Baroque movement we feel undulating through these paintings. A final application of graphite helps to capture and accent portions of the body as they interweave and melt with mark and ground.
As in Cowan’s broader oeuvre, her subject can be viewed from differing vantages, transforming the visual experience and play found therein. Bodies morph into grounds which morph into landscapes and topographic views. The figure and landscape feel anonymous but conjure up collective memories of people and places we may have been or seen. Cowan describes these subjects with an almost visionary tenor. There is an internal, psychic energy that speaks to the artist's connection to bodies and/in space. Through their intense visual stimulation, Cowan’s paintings reveal something more poetic about our connection to people we pass and environments that encapsulates us.
We hope you will be able to join us in Paris, October 17 - 22.