Kate Clark

Artist's Statement

My current work studies the tension between personal and mythical realms. I create “unnatural” sculpture that synthesizes the human face and the body of wild animals. Initially, these forms can be shocking and repelling as viewers both recognize and reject their presence. The disruptive alignment of the human and the untamed asks us to accommodate what cannot be known. The juxtaposition of the intimate face and animal body asserts that human experience is mostly contained, a mask which is incomprehensible and psychologically complex.

We bring assumptions to any contemplation of the “wild.” The wild animals – coyotes, gazelles, wildebeests, fawns – evoke memory of what we cannot recall, memory of our primitive, dangerous selves. The tamed face, our face, is a mirror reflecting safety and cultivation. Emotion is caught in the eyes, the mouth, the tilt of the head. A single life, with its private and unique history, gazes back at us. I ask you to empathize, to seek out yourselves in the vulnerability of expression and to embrace a relationship between a specific experience and a great universal mystery. Here, the dichotomy between intimate and expansive terrain is celebrated, eliciting a primal response.

– KC

Artist's Bio

Kate Clark lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Selected Recent Exhibitions: 2010 – Kate Clark: Give and Take, Mobile Museum of Art, Mobile, Alabama. 2009 – Art Miami, Claire Oliver Gallery, New York, New York; NEXT Chicago, Claire Oliver Gallery, New York, New York; Uber-Portrait, Bellevue Arts Museum, Bellevue, Washington; Pretty Tough: Contemporary Storytelling, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut; 2008 – Perfect Strangers, Claire Oliver Gallery, New York, New York; I Dream of Genomes, Islip Art Museum, East Islip, New York; New, Next, Now, Claire Oliver Gallery, New York, New York.