Kate Bae
You have probably figured out by now that we love paintings and installations; naturally, we had to feature Kate Bae, a New York based artist who creates striking installations incorporating pieces of cast and peeled paint! Relying on her own experience and neurosis, Kate transforms a traditionally two dimensional medium into the third dimension, often mimicking nature.
Born and raised in Busan, Korea, Kate Bae is an immigrant artist and independent curator based in New York City. She holds an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, both in painting. Some of her recent exhibitions include Temporary Approximations and Grow, co-curatorial projects with Fictional Art Collective, an women artist led organization based in NYC. Kate is also recipient of several awards, Creative Capital Professional Development Program in 2018 and New York Foundation for the Arts Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program in 2017. She has attended many residencies such as the Sam and Adele Golden Foundation for the Arts, SÍM Seljavegur Residency, the Studios at Mass MoCA, Trestle Gallery Residency, the Wassaic Project, Contemporary Artist Center, Tentacles+Surface Arts, Post Contemporary Residency, Marpha Foundation, Nepal, and most recently at Soaring Gardens, PA. Kate has exhibited at Ground Floor Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Trestle Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; The Knockdown Center, Maspeth, NY; Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art, Wausau, WI; Visual Center for Contemporary Art, Carlow, Ireland; Space One, Seoul, Korea, and currently showing at the Sunroom Project Space in Wave Hill, Bronx, NY.
Kate explains her work:
My work stems from a neurosis, a skin-picking syndrome called excoriation disorder: I continually peel the skin on the inner corner of my thumb. I’m pretty sure I formed the habit when I was transplanted from Busan to Chicago at the age of fifteen against my wishes to stay in Korea. Consequently, I discovered that peeling paint is a very effective way to deal with anxiety, and it gave me pleasure and satisfaction. This neurosis led me to experiment with paint materials. After casting and pouring paint, I peel the acrylic like skin. The process ultimately changes the identity of painting, which transforms when there is no canvas, brushstrokes, or content: it exists only as material. Pushing the boundaries of painting and its language feels like a gesture that corresponds to my ideas about awareness, an experience parallel to my own navigation through life as an immigrant woman.
See Kate online at www.kateisawesome.com and on Instagram
Originally published 9/12/2019
More on the blog:
