Allison Katz’s practice is a balancing act between the metaphorical and literal elements, as well as those that are exposed and those that are hidden from our view. Her paintings express the tension and communication between these two elements in a playful and sensational way.
Portals between interior and exterior, including windows and mouths, frequently appear in Katz’s imagery, addressing the multiple layers of consciousness within painting and the duality of the information we consume.
Katz’s practice pursues duality and the unavoidable double-bind of subjectivity by employing riddles and double entendres in her work. Wordplay is common, as is notable in the title of her travelling exhibition, Artery, which combines references to the body’s arteries, more tangential networks of communication, and the ways in which ‘art’ facilitates these connections.
Artery
Artery was Katz’s first institutional solo exhibition in London, a critically lauded presentation that travelled from Nottingham Contemporary to Camden Art Centre between 2021 and 2022.
Introducing Katz’s practice for this London debut, Ocula Advisory remarked, ‘Though the works are in a sense figurative and representational, any explicit, overarching meaning is foregone in favour of metaphor, wordplay, and allusion.’
Idiosyncratic language and specific motifs repeat themselves throughout the presentation, as seen in her series of still-life ‘portraits’ of cabbages, which includes Cabbage (and Philip) No.22 (2020).
