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12/10/2011

Lynne Yamamoto and Katharine Kuharic

P.P.O.W. (new location), New York

Katharine Kuharic - Pound of Flesh

"Pound of Flesh" is Katharine Kuharic's fifth solo exhibition at and has taken her seven years to complete. Taking stock pictures ("unsolicited images" from junk mail, newspapers, magazines and other sources) Kuharic meticulously re-collages images to create reconfigured histories. Her paintings are multi-layered, hyper-real, and highly keyed to an almost hallucinogenic pallet making them overwrought, sensual, and alluring. Seventeen distinct works highlight investigations into American celebrity, pop and suburban culture as well as her personal angst.

In both "Jack's Original" and "Ladue News", Kuharic takes residents of St. Louis and Ladue respectively and has them reposed on absurdist constructions. In Jacks Original, the grouped figures are given extra girth and she gives them a gesture of shame by having each person cover their genitals and waistlines. The people represented in "Ladue News" are from a society magazine with the same name. The posed pleasantness amidst the collapsing structure creates a despotic tension.

"Pound of Flesh" is an ongoing series where Kuharic tracks her weight loss and gain through repeated symbols and motifs. The years accumulate in yellow eggs laid across the bottom of the painting and her corresponding weight is recorded in red balloons above. In the center of the painting is a tangle of holly hocks, the symbol of female ambition. In addition to the measure of weight, these paintings also show the lost possibility of fertility and represent all that is fecund. Flora and fauna are depicted throughout as well as graphics of the Weight Watchers frozen dinners. This contrast of nourishment and hollow, empty food is the key metaphor for the painting.

"What Women Lost" is Kuharic's largest work in the show and will be exhibited unfinished. It is comprised of hundreds of figures including all the presidents of the United States as well as anonymous and public figures like Chuck Schumer, Matt Groening, John Ashcroft and Martha Stewart. The composition suggests an inverted vagina as well as a giant blue eye and functions as both a melted skating rink and an oval of exclusion. During this exhibition Kuharic will be on site every Saturday from 11am to 6pm painting the grass that overlays the words "Keep Out, Peek Out". In addition she will be painting watercolors that say "Made in America". These will be sold for $ 28.40 per hour, the rate that used to be paid to auto workers in Detroit.

Full color catalog with an essay by Terry Myers.

Katharine Kuharic was born in 1962 in South Bend, IN. She completed her BFA in Painting and Drawing at Carnegie Mellon University in 1984. She has been in numerous group shows in the U.S. and abroad including exhibits in Paris, Rome, Tokyo, Stockholm, London, and Amsterdam. Kuharic has had museum exhibitions at the St. Louis Art Museum, MO, The Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, the South Bend Regional Art Museum, IN, the Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, MO and the Portsmouth Museum of Art, NH. Kuharic has recently been named the Kevin Kennedy Professor of Art at Hamilton College, Clinton, NY.

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Lynne Yamamoto - Genteel

P·P·O·W is pleased to present Project 2, Genteel by Lynne Yamamoto. A wall of white doilies, each different from the next, greet the viewer. The doilies are raised above the wall surface by black insect pins. In the center of each doily, meticulous black stitches and impossible numbers of knots construct a single insect. The insects are caught in the center of the doily and from a distance, the lace-fringed, white round centers appear like an elaborate collection of Petri dishes. The smooth stitching faces the wall so a viewer engages with the backside.

On a pedestal, adjacent to the doilies, is a small white marble house. The house has been carved to appear roofed and clad with corrugated iron, not the kind of house one might expect to be immortalized. The carving is accurate but the house is not perfect. There are areas where the corrugation has been dented, where the wood framing has come loose. The house is a marker amongst the living. It is silent and closed.

There are shifts in scale: the house is decidedly smaller than the actual structure, and the insects many times their actual size. The overall palette is stark, and the tone deceptively quiet. A few insect immigrants do not draw attention, but a critical mass does.

The insects on the doilies are immigrants to Hawai'i and the house was made from Yamamoto's memory of her grandfather's work shed. The materials in the original defined plantation architecture in Hawai'i for decades. Plantations were established by missionaries from New England and drew waves of immigrants. They all stayed.

Insects Immigrants, after Zimmerman (1948)*
Hand embroidery on found doilies
2009-11

Grandfather's Shed
Hand finished, digitally carved marble from 3D scan of hand-made positive
2008-10

*Elwood Curtin Zimmerman (1912-2004) was an entomologist for the Bishop Museum (a natural history/anthropology museum), and later the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association. Shortly after being hired at the Bishop Museum in 1936, Zimmerman took on the task of documenting all the insects of Hawai'i. The core of the set are the first five volumes published in 1948.

Lynne Yamamoto was born and raised in Honolulu and currently lives in Northampton, MA. Her work has been exhibited internationally and at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Whitney Museum of American Art, PS 1 Contemporary Art Center, and The Contemporary Museum in Honolulu.

Image: Lynne Yamamoto: Genteel
embrosery, fabric, variable

Opening: 13 October 2011 - 18:00

P·P·O·W
535 West 22nd Street, 3rd Floor
10011 New York, NY
Opening Hours: Tues-Sat 10 am - 6 pm

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