The Body

CHICAGO, IL ● kasia kay art projects gallery is pleased to present The Body, an exhibition of new sculptures by Claudia Hart and paintings by Rim Lee, as well as Kattywampus, a performance by Joseph Ravens. Both the exhibition and the performance are in conjunction with the 21st annual edition of the Chicago Humanities Festival 2010. They explore the human body and identity as they are transformed and represented through paintings, technological evolution, and live performance. Curated by Kasia Kay. ● Whether through sculpture, animation, or other means of data visualization, the figure is the referent and inspiration for Claudia Hart, a digital media artist working with interactive technologies. Her exhibit Mortifications are a series of sculptures output from a Rapid Prototype printing machine using 3D models that were initially created as subjects of a separate series of 3D photo-integrations. Full of dramatic overtones, they serve as a vehicle for exploratory ideas that push and pull our perceptions of the body and impulses to move beyond it into uncharted cyber territory. In Mortifications, a realistic computer model of a nude is digitally "mutilated" and subjected to irregular, irrational, and apparently organic deformations. By juxtaposing organic forms that evoke rotting and decay with a material - ABS plastic - typically associated with industrial manufacturing and waste, the Mortifications propose a digital Baroque. Referring to the historical project of the 17th-century Baroque, the emotionally expressive and personal style of these Mortifications is intended to breathe peculiarity and life into a technical form, also in resistance to the oppressive anonymity of our own militaristic and technocratic culture. ● Rim Lee's paintings find primary source material in the performance and photography and her oeuvre focuses on the intensity of human emotions. Lee's self-portraits begin as performances where she applies black and white paint onto her nude figure, and then she photographs herself. Both media serve as a vehicle to transform a stylistic female form onto canvas in order to convey her personal massage - feelings of intimacy, isolation and suffering.

이림_the mess of emotion no.9_캔버스에 유채_194×66cm_2009

Claudia Hart_Rapid-Prototype printed sculpture, ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) plastic_7×8×4inbch_2010

Claudia Hart_Brides Rapid-Prototype printed sculpture, ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) plastic_2010

Claudia Hart_Mortification01_ed.1/1Rapid-Prototype printed sculpture, ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) solid core plastic_8×3×6inch_2007~8

In Kattywampus performance, the viewer witnesses a dysmorphic hero as he struggles to understand why his ways; and why they are wrong. Like Sisyphus and Prometheus before him, he is trapped in eternal repetition – never permitted to finish. Wearing a large replica of his own head, Joseph Ravens presents a visually compelling body movement piece inspired by Japanese Butoh. Embracing sculptural aesthetics rather than dramatic conventions, Kattywampus blurs the boundaries between task-oriented functionality and structured ritual. ● The piece was originally created as part of Collaboraction's 9th annual SKETCHBOOK Festival, Chicago 2009. ● The artists of The Body have shown internationally in galleries (including Saatchi, London), museums (including MoMA, NY; P.S.1, NY), art fairs, and at various theatre festivals. Please refer to a complete resume of each artist. ■ kasia kay art projects gallery

Vol.20101123b | The Body-클라우디아 하트_이림展