Ruth Bachofner Gallery is pleased to present Tracing Places - 8 Years, an exhibition of new work by local artist Virginia Katz. There will be a reception for the artist on Saturday, March 2, 4-6 PM
Virginia Katz’s artwork results from a close collaboration with her environment, including nature-based and man-made artifacts and influences. Her practice involves various modes of accumulation which she then invests with new form and meaning. She has recorded the rhythm of waves and wind, analyzed patterns of our air travel and collected evidence of human consumption. She then translates her observations and gatherings into abstractions that speak to our place in the cycles of nature, location, time and memory.
This exhibition represents the culmination of eight years worth of amassing various paper-based items encountered by Katz. The papers range from mundane receipts and coffee warmers to travel mementos to credit cards and advertisements. Each paper has been cut to equally sized, two-centimeter square pieces, attached to 22" x 30" sheets of paper and arranged into an 11 foot installation. The tiles, which Katz refers to as ‘markers’, or souvenirs of a specific time and place, form a massive swirling, Gaudi-like wall mosaic. The piece becomes a multi-layered memento or reminder of the artist’s personal journeys as well as that of the materials. The volume of material used and map-like composition carries with it issues of consumerism, globalism, the Trash Vortex and so on.
For Katz, Tracing Places - 8 Years, “was an attempt to ally man-made design with the process of natural form by using the recording device of the marker over a prolonged period of time, while referencing terrain and using paper as a painting medium.”
An ongoing inspiration in Katz’s work have been topographic maps, which have taken numerous forms. This is one in a series of exhibitions featuring her map-based pieces which will continue in June.