2020 Spring/Break Art Show

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Frolicking, cavorting, twisting bodies of women, mammals, snakes, men burst from the dramatic anatomical landscapes of Kate Klingbeil’s maximalist, multimedia paintings in “BURROW DOWN”. Her body of work has gone through a series of mutations— but recently, it has taken an even more complex dive into emotional earth: into the burrows. Joyous burrows, threatening burrows, excessive burrows, loving burrows, sexy burrows; a network of emotional interactions characterizes Klingbeil’s newest investigation of the excess and diversity of the emotional landscape. Simultaneously human and animal, woman and earth, Klingbeil generates a network of overlapping narratives that are deeply personal yet almost transhuman, through a theatre of thick, materially effusive figurative vignettes. 

An immersive installation combining animation, installation, sculpture and painting, “BURROW DOWN” presents Kate Klingbeil’s newest turn— the depths of the burrow— as a revisionist vision of the self, an internal exterior, flipping viewer’s emotional viscera to external, communal play. This vision of a uniting emotional network is not uncritical. Klingbeil’s work comes from a deeply rooted desire to reveal and transform heteropatriarchal power. When asked about the excessive, woman-centric nature of her latest large-scale works, Klingbeil pronounced that “women are constantly told they are too much. They are told to tone down. Told to reduce. Well, I want to lean in to ‘too much.’”

Combining 2, 3, and 4D, “BURROW DOWN” certainly goes above and beyond “too much” and tips into an exorbitant and overwhelming realm reflecting a world of post-globalizing hybrid identity and emotion. Populated to the brink with paint-peeled figures, each burrow communicates a different emotional element. Centrally, an animation hidden inside a burrow carved into a (false) wall captures viewers’ attention with sound, movement and flashes of direct, dramatic narrative.

Exuberant, staggering, these landscapes convey the true essence of the spectrum between awe and joy. Awe— awesomeness— “is being filled powerfully to the brink of the skin with admiration, terror, and near wonderment at the sublime and the uber-powerful. Joy— joyousness— is a vibration, a wave of energy fueled by pure happiness, near an ecstasy yet never touching that sensual-sexual realm. Between them lie shockwaves of emotions often left unexplored by contemporary artists, yet which Kate Klingbeil daringly probes through her dramatic use of space, narrative, material excess and self contained ecosystems. With “BURROW DOWN,” Kate Klingbeil has built an immersive installation exploring one multiplicitous facet extracted from a vast emotional spectrum: the spilling depths of vibrant joy.

KATE KLINGBEIL (b. 1990) is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY, and originally hailing from the midwest. Her work in paint, sculpture and animation looks to reflect an ever-changing cycle of the human landscape, and what it feels like to exist in a body that is constantly negotiating a relationship with joy, humor, melancholy and movement. She has had solo exhibitions at Crush Curatorial in NYC (“Thick” in 2017), and Hashimoto Contemporary in San Francisco (“Pith” in 2018). Select two-person and group exhibitions include Monya Rowe Gallery, NYC (duo exhibition ‘On the Inside’ with Rebecca Ness in 2019), Situations, NYC (group exhibition ‘Fresh Fruit’ in 2019), Paul Kasmin Gallery, NYC (group exhibition ‘Seed’ curated by Yvonne Force in 2018), The Hole, NYC (group exhibition ‘Clay Today’ in 2018), and Andrew Rafacz Gallery (group exhibition ‘Figured Out!’ in 2017). Kate has attended residencies at Acre, WI (2016), Art Farm, NE (2019) and the Corporation of Yaddo, NY (2019). Kate received a BFA in printmaking from California College of the Arts in Oakland, CA in 2012.