KAETHE KAUFFMAN
LA FORESTA
CASTELLO GALLERY 780, VENICE, ITALY
INTRODUCTION | JEN DRAGON , EXHIBITION CURATOR
Aconcept that originated in Japan during the 1980s, Forest Bathing, or mindfully walking in the woods, is prescribed as an antidote to an increasingly technological and alienating world.
The artist, Kaethe Kauffman, embraces this concept as she meditates on the unseen systems of forest growth as well as on memories of the calm, steady presence of individual trees throughout her life. Kauffman’s most recent series of prints on paper and silk not only explores the individuality and spirit of trees combined with the physical movement of walking through nature, but then captures this sensation with the meditative movements of drawing. These artworks, in turn, are transformed into prints on silk banners and on paper mounted onto wood panels. The lightweight fabric installations act as thin veils of consciousness. The installation of 20 prints mounted onto woodblocks re-combine into a larger mural until the image of individual trees is subsumed into a collective vision.
Kaethe Kauffman was born in Cheverly, Maryland and grew up in Seattle. A long-time practitioner of yoga and body movement, Kaethe Kauffman has been the subject of solo exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad including the Rensselaer Newman Foundation, Troy, NY; Walter Wickiser Gallery in NYC, NY; Banco Gallery, Bethlehem, PA; Berry College, Mount Berry, GA; Czech Museum of Fine Arts, Prague; and Castello 925, Venice, IT on the occasion of the 59th Venice Biennale.
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Kauffman…brings in a directive of the spirit that emanates from the earth passing through our bodies and minds as an endless stream of the universal experiences of all living things.D. DOMINICK LOMBARDI
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
Igrew up in Seattle with omnipresent rain and abundant trees. The land around our home featured a cherry orchard, with plum, pear and apple trees growing wild in the back. In early spring, pink blossoms covered the fruit trees. Decades later, after living in various climes, from desert to mountain top to tropical jungle, I discovered my meandering pen drawing pink trees, filled with the blossoms of an early Seattle spring.
When I was young, trees provide protection and nurturing. When I climbed them, they sheltered me from large neighborhood teen-agers. I felt safe with a book, aloft in the branches, grabbing and eating tangy cherries, tart apples or sweet plums.
Individual trees became life-long friends, such as a red-bark Western Red Cedar that was the same height as me when I was eight years old. After I performed a ceremony where I broke open a scab and joined my scarlet blood with the cedar’s russet bark, I considered the tree to be my “blood brother”. It now towers over our house, more than one hundred feet tall, and I still chat with it, like the older sibling it seems to be.
Recent studies show that the increased oxygen around trees, as well as the phytoncides (plant chemicals) they produce, benefit human health: blood pressure, heart rate and blood sugars lower. Anxiety, depression and anger become measurably less. Immune system strength grows. I intuitively feel this when I walk among trees and sit under them, forest bathing.
I draw and paint all the trees I’ve known. In my drawings, I often include the unseen aspects of trees: the sap flowing or underground roots spreading. I depict the sustenance a tree receives from the accumulated debris we discard, what we call dirt. With years of our amassed disposals, a miracle occurs. Miraculous microbes transform our natural wastes (and some synthetics) into food for plants. I visualize these sacred processes in many of my drawings.
Besides providing emotional and medical benefits, trees absorb CO2, helping to cool our overheated planet. In this series of drawings, I honor trees, from the various climates I’ve lived in, that’ve personally aided me in my past. From tiny sizes to the gigantic, these helpful beings spread their benefits far and wide to help all of us.
KAETHE KAUFFMAN, 2024
Kaethe Kauffman’s art, generative and generous, engenders experiences of repose, contemplation and mystery for the beholder. Her other intensely realized artworks reverberate with singular authority and poetry — all in the service of invoking sacral feelings of unification and culminating in sensations of centering. “
The art that Kaethe Kauffman has been working on for the past few years has several striking characteristics. Firstly, the sensation of resonance permeates her works in variable intensities as all of her artworks have a pronounced optically reverberatory tenor matched by a luminescent quality. Secondly, the spreading out of such light, of illumination, a glowing attribute or ingredient, recalls an auratic propensity. It somehow feels right, as the aura might be felt as relating to a corresponding numinous experience — a sense of awe and wonderment — evoked by Kauffman for her viewers through her artworks. Thirdly, the artist has a gift for imbuing everything she touches or composes (using digital manipulation of forms and colors…drawings, prints) with uncanny predetermined significance. Fourthly, aiding and abetting all of this is the artist’s capacity to induce sensory exploration on the part of the viewer. Kauffman does this while resisting grand pictorialism and piercing existential moments in favor of lyrical exhilaration…The end results are lively, finished works that are elevating, energizing, soothing, mystifying and fascinating all at once.
Finally, the artist has the remarkable capacity of creating imagery that lingers in the mind long after the spectator has turned away and receded from the actual physical encountering of the art object. This persistent eidetic imagery sustains itself within the thresholds separating the consciousness and the unconsciousness of the viewer. One may argue that this take-away on the part of the viewer might be the numinous experience itself and is well-suited to enliven Kauffman’s artistic intentionality…
DOMINIQUE NAHASKAETHEKAUFFMAN.COM