A new solo exhibition of paintings by Katherine Mann opened on February 21 at the Rice Gallery at McDaniel College in Westminster. The installation, entitled SLURRY, is composed of Mann’s large works on paper developed over the past year in her Washington, DC studio.
These sumi ink and multimedia pieces are visceral and bold in appearance, and installed especially to fill the spacious gallery with spontaneous abstract energy and detailed painterly gestures.
Since earning her MFA from the Hoffberger School at MICA in 2009, Mann has continued to refine and expand her distinctive style, which she characterizes as “baroque abstract, a celebration of the abundance of connections and clashes found in the disparate mess of matter in the world.”
The bold strokes of her paintings begin with pools of sumi ink on large sheets of paper, which provide the foundations for a layered dialogue, rich in detail.
A drawing sensibility is evident in her swooping lines and cross-hatched structures, yet there are also plenty of instances of loosely-flung ink spots and chaotic forms.
Weft
The 25-foot-long piece entitled Weft, dominated by enormous pools of cherry red amid interlocking cloaks of battleship gray, is both joyful and shocking for viewers entering the gallery. The narrow color palette and dominant scale make this piece not only a highlight of the show but also a provocative abstract narrative of nature, open to interpretation at opposite emotional poles.
Tower
The more subdued Tower, smaller and contained to a range of blues and grays on white paper, provides an immediate transition to a more meditative mood, while still conjuring up intriguing conflicts in the juxtaposition of geometric and surrealistic organic shapes.
Lux
Next to it is the more splashy and confrontational Lux, grungy and almost outlandish evidence that the artist does not resist any opportunity to reach outside her comfort zone, whether developing works in the studio or curating an installation.
The pieces convey both a sense of immediacy and the predominant meditative energy achievable only by gradual, patient work.
Slurry
Slurry
Slurry
The large site-specific Slurry, which splashes from a wide wall down onto and across the wood floor, is a piece that Mann created especially for this show, and in fact the artist did not actually see the entire piece assembled until she installed it. It resembles an effervescent gray dragon drenched in ribbons, and creates a continuing visual dialogue with the large red panels across the room.
The paintings seem like philosophical conversations, created by an articulate artist who has received a long list of honors, grants and residencies.
Mann, now teaching at MICA, has traveled to Taiwan on a Fulbright grant, and has also been selected by the Hamiltonian Fellowship Program in Washington, as well as exhibiting at the Mariane Boesky Gallery in New York.
By creating and breaking her own boundaries within her finely-wrought pictures, Mann suggests a world “punctuated by moments of absurdity, mutation, growth and decay that I find both suffocating and fabulous.”
Well worth a trip to the elegant McDaniel College campus, this exhibition runs through March 16. The gallery is free and open to the public from noon until 4:00 pm Monday through Wednesday and also on Friday.
For directions or more gallery information please call 410-857-2595. For more information about the artist, please visit www.katherinemann.net.
