white8/VIENNA
 
KATY STONE
 
Yellow Light Black 
Installation 

Eröffnung am 28. Januar von 18-21 Uhr 
Die Künstlerin war anlässlich der Eröffnung anwesend

Ausstellungsdauer
 bis 20. März 2010
 

Biografie 

1969 geboren in Rockford 
1992 Bachelor of Fine Arts: Drawing, Painting, Printmaking, 
Iowa State University, Ames, IA 
1994 Master of Fine Arts: Painting, 
University of Washington, Seattle, WA 
Lebt und arbeitet in Seattle 

2003 erstmalige Präsentation in Europa 
Art Basel, Art Cologne 
2010 erste Soloausstellung in Österreich 
white8 GALLERY, Vienna 

„DIE SPRACHE IST DAS MEDIUM, 
IN DEM DAS SEIN, 
SICH LICHTEND, 
ZUR SPRACHE KOMMT.“ 
(Martin Heidegger) 

„I create objects with visual magnetism and distinct material presence that blur the boundaries between drawing, painting and sculpture.  I paint on archival plastic film, paper, and metal, accumulating a mass of gestures that are cut, combined and layered into assemblages.  These constructions are pinned to the wall or mounted in layers and they hover between 2D and 3D. As light passes through the layers, it casts shadows onto the wall, an ephemeral effect that becomes an integral part of the work. Created in a broad range of scale, from tiny specimen-sized works to encompassing installations, my pieces are abstract and also suggestive of natural forms and processes.  My work touches on fundamental dualities: natural and artificial, stillness and motion, transience and permanence, growth and decay, boldness and delicacy.

The works in this show are crafted from the three distinct and contrasting hues of yellow, white and black. Though each work will be strikingly singular, they will also merge to create an immersive environment in the gallery.  

Yellow, Light, Black is formally descriptive but also metaphoric. The work creates a world of color and a harvest of shapes that are inspired by the word “glade.” A glade is an English word that means a clearing in a forest, similar to the word “lichtung.” Obsolete senses of glade include [a gleam of light] and [a bright space between clouds]. I am enchanted by this word and its meanings. This bright, clear place could not exist or be experienced if there was not also darkness and density; it is open and clear only because it is surrounded by the tangle and overgrowth of a forest. There must also be a moment where the clearing and the darkness merge.

This sense of balanced and opposing forces is manifested in the collection of work for this exhibition. Simple shapes and strokes of paint layer together to suggest flowers, blossoms, leaves, grass blades, clouds, and tree boughs (among a multitude of other possibilities that might be envisioned by the viewer.) The works are alive with gesture and frozen in motion. They appear to be blown and scattered by the wind or they are silent and still. On one wall they drape like a dark tree; on another wall, they billow in white, like ghostly clouds or they bloom in an explosion of yellow petals. They swirl with a gracefulness that also might be chaos.

It is a world of brightness, lightness, and darkness that invites the imagination.“  (Katy Stone)