Katy Moran
wexner center for the arts
Introduction
This presentation of painting by Katy Moran is part of Six Solos, a suite of six discrete exhibitions each featuring the work of a rising international artist. Since its inception in 1989, the Wexner Center has embraced a strong commitment to the work of younger artists engaged in pushing their practice in new directions. For many of the Six Solos artists, this marks their first solo exhibition in a U.S. museum, and for all of them, their presentation at the Wex offers a welcome chance to introduce their work to broad and diverse new audiences. Each artist has taken the center’s invitation as an incentive to broaden their scope of address and expand their already ambitious repertoire of forms and ideas. We believe that all six artists are on the cusp of greater achievement and renown, and we are particularly pleased to be able to include them in the programs and festivities marking our 21st anniversary in November 2010. As we now leave adolescence behind, we’ve undoubtedly gained a modicum of professional and institutional maturity, but Six Solos remains true to the energetic, irreverent spirit of artistic exploration and discovery that has marked the Wexner Center throughout its first two decades. That sensibility will certainly remain embedded in our DNA for years to come. Sherri Geldin, Director Christopher Bedford, Chief Curator of Exhibitions Wexner Center for the Arts The Ohio State University
COVER
OVERLEAF
Wacky Races 2 (detail), 2009 Acrylic and collage on canvas 15 x 18 1/8 inches Collection of Jay Bauer
Daniel, 2008 Acrylic on canvas 18 1/8 x 15 inches Private collection, San Francisco, Courtesy of Anthony Meier Fine Arts
All images courtesy of Stuart Shave, Modern Art, London.
Short legs. . . I’m coming, 2008 Acrylic and oil pastel on canvas and wood panel in 3 parts 15 x 18 inches; 20 x 10 7/8 inches; 18 x 15 inches Private collection
Take Me To Barbados, 2007 Acrylic on canvas 12 x 16 1/8 inches Zabludowicz Collection
Painting Irrespective Christopher Bedford
What has never yet been analyzed is why this particular
One of the most fashionable defenses of painting
way of painting is more poignant than illustration. I
marshaled by the medium’s dwindling cadre of
own, like the image one’s trying to trap; it lives on its
its ability to adapt to and reflect shifts in the
more poignantly. So that the artist may be able to open
culture; to be, first and foremost, responsive: a
suppose because it has a life of its own. It lives on its
partisans points to its fundamental elasticity,
own, and therefore transfers the essence of the image
form and content of contemporary visual
up or rather, should I say, unlock the valves of feeling and
barometer of a changing world. For painting to
—Francis Bacon1
account for not only the ebbs and flows of its own
therefore return the onlooker to life more violently.
stay “relevant,” so the argument goes, it must embattled history—it must be, in other words, completely self-aware and self-critical—but it must also enfold critical references to popular
Jaguar Nights, 2008 Acrylic on canvas and board in 2 parts 18 1/8 x 15 inches; 12 ¼ x 8 7/8 inches Private collection
visual culture, contemporary design, televisual
long dead—Max Ernst, for instance, or Francis
imagery, digital media, and the image stream
Bacon, as well as such “outsider” artists as
experience of life online, all in an effort to
Augustin Lesage, Forrest Bess, Martin Ramírez,
update its own compromised profile and renew
and Henry Darger—than to possibly like-minded
once again, always with the faintest hint of
contemporary peers.3 She also maintains a
apology, its tenuous claims to credibility. For
healthy disinterest in art theoretical tomes that
the painter working today, this rather tall order
might sanctify or bolster her activities in the
represents one possible means of securing a
studio, a position that puts her distinctly at odds
positive critical response for one’s work. And then
with an emerging generation of abstractionists
there is the matter of producing a compelling
who consider themselves “conceptual painters.”
picture. Daunting indeed. Perhaps the only path
None of this implies, however, that Moran is
more daunting would be to jettison these new
any less thoughtful about what it means to be a
orthodoxies entirely, which is precisely what
painter than her bookish contemporaries. Take
is most striking about Katy Moran’s paintings:
for instance the following comment on the death
they evince a natural estrangement from this
of painting: “That idea has never meant anything
self-justifying rhetoric that is startling in its
to me. But, I often get those moments, when I
assurance. Though she would contest the veracity
think, what is the point? Is there any need for
of the label, Moran is, simply put, an abstract
this to exist? But then I think about the way I feel
painter (more on that later), who works on a
when I look at other people’s paintings and that’s
modest scale, sometimes on a found support,
enough. I don’t think there is anything that can
employing expressionistic brushwork, lately
do what painting can. I think painting can raise
in combination with found materials, and a
a particular sensation, and no other medium
seductive, quirky palette to yield compositions of
can do it. The fact that it sometimes seems
unusual power, concision, and emotion.
incompatible with day-to-day life makes it all the
If Moran’s paintings seem outside time and happily (perhaps pointedly) oblivious to the
more relevant and important.”4 The spirit of Moran’s unabashedly personal
anxiety of critical reception so clearly inscribed
engagement with this persistent question of
in the work of many of her peers, a brief
painting’s relevance is reiterated in her work and
conversation with the artist is enough to confirm
in her working processes. In the way that she
both suspicions. She is deeply thoughtful about
thinks and talks about her process, she shares
what she does and how she does it, working and
the closest affinity with Francis Bacon, the
appraising her efforts constantly, and discarding
predecessor she quotes most readily. “Can you
more aborted canvases than she declares finished
analyze the difference, in fact, between paint
and allows to leave her studio. As she notes, “I
which conveys directly and paint which conveys
am trying to reach quite a specific outcome but
through illustration?” Bacon asks. “This is a very,
through an irrational process.” Naturally, this
very difficult problem to put into words. It is
leads to a higher than average rate of failure. But,
something to do with instinct. It’s a very, very
Moran’s deep engagement with her own studio
close and difficult thing to know why some paint
2
life aside, she operates at a considerable remove
comes across directly onto the nervous system
from the art world of the present, referring more
and other paint tells you a story in a long diatribe
readily and with greater conviction to painters
through the brain.”5 Like Bacon, Moran eschews
Captain Beaky and his Band I, 2006 Acrylic on canvas 23 5/8 x 19 3/4 x 1 1/4 inches The Rachofsky Collection
Captain Beaky and his Band II, 2006 Acrylic on canvas 23 5/8 x 19 3/4 x 1 1/4 inches The Rachofsky Collection
Ledger, 2008 Acrylic on canvas 15 x 18 1/8 inches David Roberts Collection, London
the goal of literal recognition in favor of a kind of
hues that comprise the background. Although
activity that rests on the generation of intense,
every push, pull, and scrape of paint could yield
imprecise sensations through concomitantly
a descriptive sentence, the consistent paradox
imprecise imagery. Indeed she has said herself
lies in the fact that one can lavish language on
that “sensation is the word or idea that resonates
every square inch of this small canvas without
with me most.”
gaining any firmer understanding of why one is
6
Some of Moran’s earliest paintings, a small suite of which are included in this exhibition, record the artist’s first tussle with the question
compelled to keep looking at it, and so closely at that. Perhaps because Moran’s style of painting so obviously reflects her sensation of seeing
of recognition through intellect versus the
the world one is given temporary permission
generation of sensation through experience,
to inhabit another subjectivity, to see through
outlined above by Bacon. Paintings like Captain
another set of eyes, an accommodation that is
Beaky and his Band II (2006) that, quite obviously,
both beguiling and irresistible.
entice the viewer to search for hints of the
an idea,” Moran claims. “Rather I want paint to
discernable amidst an inventory of autonomous
convey a sensation that captures a character. If
painterly marks, and to speculate that the
I were to make certain marks in paint that are
take as their point of departure a single image,
“I don’t want to paint to simply execute
painting represents an act of translation from
supposed to represent something, the paint
one language—perhaps a photograph or an image
would feel dead to me. But sometimes when I
found online—to another entirely different one:
find a set of marks within another canvas, that
a domestically scaled abstract painting. Maybe.
feels more authentic. But if I had orchestrated
Yet for all that remains just beyond one’s grasp in
those same characters, they would feel dead.
Moran’s paintings, they are nevertheless a joy to
This process emerges from my sense that my
describe. The way she handles paint and deploys a
conscious ideas may not be my best. I want
range of sensual rococo hues is a feast for the eyes
to imagine ideas that come from somewhere
and an invitation to ekphrasis.
else.”8 This ambition becomes more nuanced
In Captain Beaky and his Band II, unlike in
more fractured, variegated later works, it is
tempting to identify a figural presence in the composition, a temptation lent credence by the fact that Moran has maintained all along that the central objective of her painting is to describe a
and convincing in slightly later works like Ledger (2008), which do not derive from a single source image but from many sources and even
from memory. Ledger relies on a more limited, understated palette but incorporates a far
greater formal range of marks, and two decisions
“character.” Though the definition of character
combine to render the character or figure that
has become increasingly gaseous and intangible
presumably lurks somewhere in the composition
for the artist, here the word stakes a more literal
all but invisible. If we are to take Moran at her
7
claim on the image. A figure, drawn out more
word, such characters still exist for her, despite
through contrast than specific form, stands offset
their erasure from our field of vision, a claim
very slightly to the left, a clumsy, oddly disjointed
that draws attention to the important possibility
vertical presence composed of discrete dabs of
that abstraction in Moran’s work is less a hard
high key paint that together establish a clear
and fast formal line separating the legible from
figure/ground relationship to the thinner, darker
the illegible and more a question of personal
moonmen, 2010 Acrylic, collage, watercolor and cut paper on canvas, diptych 15 1/4 x 11 1/8 inches; 18 1/8 x 14 7/8 inches Private collection
subjectivity: a question, in other words, not of
collage-based compositions from 2009 and 2010
what is there but instead of what one sees. A
point to a more plural dimension in her work, a
tongue-in-cheek proposition about how best
willingness to let other voices, images, and ideas
to control the consumption of her work in a
comingle with her own.
gallery context illustrates this idea of subjectivity
Other painters, rough contemporaries
as established through vision: “It’s also about
like Charline Von Heyl, for example, explain
viewing distance. I almost want to mark the floor
their desire to paint abstractly as an effort to
where people should stand. Not too close, and not
generate an image they have never seen before.
too far away. I want people to see it as I see it, but
Moran turns this tidy, quasi-utopian aspiration
I realize that is almost impossible.”9 Moran’s most recent paintings, those
on its head. She stops working on a canvas when absolutely certain that she and she alone can
from 2009 and 2010, incorporate found elements
discern the figure or, more accurately, character,
including antique frames and collage materials
that was present from the beginning; she refers
that she uses as part of her palette along with her
to these ghosts of likenesses as existing “in a
conventional acrylics and, in another new turn,
different language.”11 Moran, then, does not paint
oil pastels. If the artist’s move away from a single
to make an image she hasn’t seen before, but
source image to multiple sources represents
rather reworks and ravages her subjects knowing
one major shift in her career to date, this still-
that they can never lose their familiarity in her
developing interest in collage represents another.
eyes if they are to succeed as finished works
Although Moran’s work has always rested on
and have a life in the world. Once she finds that
appropriation to some extent, motivated by a
character in an accident of process, it becomes
desire, as she has noted, “to make it more my
the element that anchors the work through
own,” the use of found material literalizes
completion. The burden of the new, then, is
this process, bringing her hand into collision
born or measured not by Moran but instead by
with preexistent images.10 This meeting of the
the viewer who takes up her way of seeing as
autographic (the painterly mark) and the mass
something new. It is perhaps the otherness of
produced (paper shards and magazine fragments)
this deeply personal transaction that makes her
introduces a worldly element to Moran’s painting, paintings, so apparently indifferent to time and shifting her work slightly but vitally away from
relevance, paradoxically fresh and present.
the simple designation of painting and into dialogue with another set of predecessors entirely including Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. She still insists on the persistence of a “character” in these works, and the brushstrokes are unmistakably hers, but the integration of pictorial elements not entirely her own signifies, perhaps, a slight loosening of her drive to create an impermeably autographic field of vision. If the first two phases of her career were marked by a desire to develop a very personal painting style that threw into relief the singularity of vision, her
Christopher Bedford is the Wexner Center’s chief curator of exhibitions.
Notes 1 Francis Bacon quoted in David Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon 1961–1979 (London: Thames & Hudson, 1980), 17. 2 Katy Moran quoted in “The Tate Would Be Nice Wouldn’t It?” Useless 4, 41. 3 In an email from October 4, 2010, Katy Moran noted her interest in contemporary painters as well as historical ones and expressed her strong interest in the work of “outsider” artists such as those mentioned here: “I see a power in their work and wonder if this power comes from the fact that they supposedly were not aware of an/their audience. That maybe ego, social progression, or the intellectual process didn’t come into their work.” She concluded, “I suppose in feeling this way, I might feel a considerable remove from the art world at present.” 4 Katy Moran in conversation with the author, August 12, 2010. 5 Francis Bacon quoted in David Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon 1961–1979, 18. In the October 4 email cited above, Moran reminded me that she is drawn less to Bacon’s paintings than to the way he talked about his work and his process. 6 Katy Moran quoted in Sara Hughes, “An Interview with Katy Moran,” in Katy Moran (St. Ives, Cornwall: Tate St. Ives, 2009), unpaged. 7 Katy Moran in conversation with the author, August 12, 2010. 8 Katy Moran in conversation with the author, August 12, 2010. 9 Katy Moran in conversation with the author, August 12, 2010. Perhaps the emphasis I’m placing on the question of how each viewer sees Moran’s work is a means of balancing my belief that she is, as I wrote above, “an abstract painter” and her own discomfort with that designation. As she wrote in her October 4 email: “I see figurative things in more or less every painting I make.… I appreciate that they also have very abstract qualities but to me they feature characters or landscapes or some recognizable image.” Yet because those elements are unrecognizable to me, I see her work as abstract. 10 Katy Moran in conversation with the author, August 12, 2010. 11 Katy Moran quoted in Sara Hughes, “An Interview with Katy Moran,” in Katy Moran, unpaged.
Checklist Captain Beaky and his Band I, 2006 Acrylic on canvas 23 5/8 x 19 3/4 x 1 1/4 inches The Rachofsky Collection Captain Beaky and his Band II, 2006 Acrylic on canvas 23 5/8 x 19 3/4 x 1 1/4 inches The Rachofsky Collection Sick Boy, 2006 Acrylic on canvas 18 1/8 x 15 x 1 1/4 inches The Mario Testino Collection Lazy Wears Blue, 2007 Acrylic on canvas 18 1/8 x 15 inches Private collection Salters Ridge, 2007 Acrylic on canvas 18 1/8 x 15 inches Private collection, Courtesy of Stuart Shave, Modern Art, London Take Me To Barbados, 2007 Acrylic on canvas 12 x 16 1/8 inches Zabludowicz Collection Volestere, 2007 Acrylic on canvas 15 x 18 1/8 inches Private collection, New York Wasabi without Tears, 2007 Acrylic on canvas 15 x 18 1/8 inches Collection of Ninah and Michael Lynne Daniel, 2008 Acrylic on canvas 18 1/8 x 15 inches Private collection, San Francisco, Courtesy of Anthony Meier Fine Arts Ledger, 2008 Acrylic on canvas 15 x 18 1/8 inches David Roberts Collection, London Orton, 2008 Acrylic on canvas 15 x 18 1/8 inches Collection of Nancy and Nate Kacew Rinky’s, 2008 Acrylic on wood panel 15 3/4 x 19 3/4 x 1 3/8 inches Courtesy of Stuart Shave, Modern Art, London Short legs. . . I’m coming, 2008 Acrylic and oil pastel on canvas and wood panel in 3 parts 15 x 18 inches; 20 x 10 7/8 inches; 18 x 15 inches Private collection Whistan, 2008 Acrylic on canvas 23 5/8 x 11 3/4 inches Collection of Mark and Emily Goldstein boy cat, 2009 Acrylic and frame on canvas 24 x 19 3/4 inches Private collection
Dogs, Flowers, and Summer Holidays II, 2009 Acrylic and oil pastel on board 15 5/8 x 18 5/8 inches Collection Nunzia and Vittorio Gaddi, Lucca, Italy, Courtesy of Galleria il Capricorno, Venezia duchess mouse on her way to the port, 2009 Acrylic and collage on canvas 18 7/8 x 13 3/4 inches Collection of Christen and Derek Wilson If we don’t have it you don’t need it, 2009 Acrylic on canvas 18 7/8 x 15 3/4 inches From the collection of Sir Elton John and David Furnish lady bear with a back full of hair, 2009 Acrylic and collage on canvas 19 3/4 x 14 3/4 inches The Collection of Niels Kantor Muffin Power, 2009 Acrylic on canvas 25 5/8 x 21 3/4 inches Ken and Helen Rowe, London Pillow Drinker, 2009 Acrylic, oil pastel and collage on canvas 15 x 18 1/8 inches Dr. and Mrs. I. Rowan, Northern Ireland Travelling Mercy, 2009 Acrylic on canvas in 3 parts with found frames 17 1/2 x 15 3/4 inches; 15 x 18 1/8 inches; 21 7/8 x 18 1/4 inches Collection of Lord Browne Wacky Races 2, 2009 Acrylic and collage on canvas 15 x 18 1/8 inches Collection of Jay Bauer Bear 1, 2010 Acrylic and collage on canvas 15 3/8 x 11 3/8 inches Private collection Bear 3, 2010 Acrylic and collage on framed canvas 16 1/4 x 19 3/8 inches Collection of Hugh Gibson, London Black Moon, 2010 Acrylic and collage on canvas with found frame 21 1/8 x 17 3/8 inches Collection of Dana and Shimon Sheves moonmen, 2010 Acrylic, collage, watercolor and cut paper on canvas, diptych 15 1/4 x 11 1/8 inches; 18 1/8 x 14 7/8 inches Private collection Whitmore, 2010 Acrylic and frame on canvas 19 1/8 x 14 15/16 inches Collection of the artist
About the Artist
Six Solos Erwin Redl Megan Geckler Tobias Putrih/MOS Gustavo Godoy Katy Moran Joel Morrison
Born in Manchester, England, in 1975, Katy Moran
November 9, 2010–February 13, 2011
received an honors BA in graphic art and design from
Six Solos is organized by the Wexner Center, with Chief Curator of Exhibitions Christopher Bedford as the overall curator for the series and project curator for Katy Moran.
Leeds Metropolitan University in 1998 and an MA in painting from the Royal College of Art in London in 2005. That year Moran was selected for inclusion in The Art Review 25: London MA Graduates, the British art magazine’s supplement featuring intriguing new
artists emerging from London’s top art schools. She continues to live and work in London. Moran has had solo exhibitions at Stuart Shave, Modern Art in London (2009; 2006), Galleria il Capricorno in Venice, Italy (2009), Anthony Meier Fine Arts in San Francisco, Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York City, and Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art in Middlesbrough, England (all 2008), and Grusenmeyer Art Gallery in Deurie, France (2006). Her work has also been featured in group exhibitions at Tate Britain, Tate St. Ives, and elsewhere throughout England, as well as in Austria, Germany, and the United States. Moran’s paintings have been reviewed and discussed in such publications as Artforum, the New
York Times, Art in America, Art Review, and the Independent on Sunday. Her work is also the subject of a small
monograph published by the Tate St. Ives in 2009.
All exhibitions and related events at the Wexner Center for the Arts receive support from the Corporate Annual Fund of the Wexner Center Foundation and Wexner Center members, as well as from the Greater Columbus Arts Council, The Columbus Foundation, Nationwide Foundation, and the Ohio Arts Council. © The Ohio State University, Wexner Center for the Arts. Wexner Center for the Arts The Ohio State University 1871 North High Street Columbus, OH 43210-1393 wexarts.org