Kathryn Hart, LOVES RAZOR (RHAPSODY FROM TIVOLI), 2020, Site-Specific Installation at the Judy Pfaff Compound, Mongolian horsehair, found wire and barbed wire, resin, bone, bioluminescent powdered pigment, glass ampoules, latex tubing, hardware, feathers, bone, lights, mixed media, and objects, 40x35x30 ft
KATHRYN HART
Artist Statement
I make art to express the threshold of transformation, transience, and loss. Rooted in personal narrative, themes become visible through hanging sculpture, installation, black and white photography, and monoprints. My language spans an uncensored private diary of objects, symbols, and alchemic materials. Airy sculptures created in suspension and made of long horsehair, aggressive frontier barbed wire, glass medicinal ampoules, latex tubing, and bioluminescent resins sway from ambient conditions. Chosen materials connote childhood, my bodily scars, and caretaking others. Works extend beyond my reach from large gestures and become further amplified by shadow, light, and reflection. Meticulous, intimate labor invites close examination.
Currently, I am focusing on transformation from a personal and universal perspective. I saw my husband continue to strive in the latter stages of a terminal illness and relate his relentless fight for life to changes I viewed during my walks over 20 years in the forest next to my home. I absorbed the energy of strained efforts to thrive and renew in an environment that can no longer support its former life. I, too, have transformed while being a full-time caretaker and watching the natural world under the influence of changing habitats.
My black and white photography series convey elastic time and immediate moments. The photos blur, bend, stretch, and stop time. Scenes posing a tension between light and dark, renewal and decay, conflict and harmony, and the timeless and the unique interest me. The silver gelatin printing process offers lush darks, rich for exploration, suggesting that the world is not as binary as it might seem.
I use many fractal materials; each serves as a complete polaroid of my past, and together they merge into a full-length looping movie. I am excited to make pieces that condense, expand, and defy gravitational assignment. My process involves extracting raw, embedded emotion and bringing it to light. By doing so, I commune with others seeking the regenerative powers of the universe. Propelled by the requisite vulnerability and honesty of bearing witness, I come to the brink during making – at the moment before diving into murky waters to find a current of clarity. Childhood weekends on a Texas farm and a scientific background have born this unflinching viewpoint. In addition, mythology, literature, and lyrics are often underlying threads in my practice.
Past Group Exhibitions: Structures of Feeling, 2022