Philip Martin Gallery is pleased to present, "Built from Line," a solo exhibition of new works by Berlin-based artist Katy Cowan. This special exhibition of Cowan's work is co-hosted by Berlin gallery Haverkampf Leistenschneider, and takes place at their Charlottenburg space July 4 - 19, 2025, alongside a group presentation of new and never-before-seen works by Kwame Brathwaite, Carl Cheng, Tomory Dodge, Sky Glabush, Laurie Nye, Sophie Treppendahl and Sung Jik Yang.
Katy Cowan uses sources and materials in unexpected ways. We intuitively and immediately understand the results of her artistic practice, but somehow cannot predict them as they rise out of the act of both her and us thinking about things anew. “I am completely interested in breaking down barriers of categorization,” she writes. Katy Cowan notes that her medium-defying, hand-painted, cast wall-mounted sculptures draw on a variety of experiences, be it where she lives, where she works, or what she thinks about on a given day, all of which is grist for the mill for a practice that attends to alteration, repetition, and a conceptual emphasis on material choice.
This past spring Katy Cowan was invited to work at Berlin's renowned German art foundry Skulpturengießerei Knaak, which has worked with such figures as Katharina Grosse, Jonathan Meese and David Zink Yi. To the foundry Cowan brought a variety of everyday objects, such as masking tape, cardboard sheets, and paint palettes (complete with the kind of paint squeezes, scrapes and blobs that result on a palette from days working in the studio). These objects were cast via the lost wax technique; in their transformation, a range of information - from the grain of the cardboard to the lines of the tape - not to mention all the looping and bending lines and volumes of the paint squeezes, scraps and blobs - was cast in low-relief aluminum. Katy Cowan then hand-painted these low relief sculptures, applying across their textures and volumes strokes of bright oil paint that move the eye via color jumps of hue, value, temperature and intensity.
Are we looking at a painting, or a sculpture? An image, or an object? Perhaps all of the above. These are the kinds of interests Cowan shares with an artist like Jasper Johns. "Take an object / Do something to it / Do something else to it,” Johns wrote in a sketchbook in 1964. Katy Cowan embraces an open attitude towards studio practice, noting, “I love incorporating accidents into my work and learning to react to them, to build off of them.” Cowan's body, studio tools and the events in her immediate environment serve as generative subject-matter for her artworks. These artworks investigate human experience and the traces left by such experience. They suggest that ideas and objects are both physical and metaphorical; and that an impression can take forms both indexically literal – like a metal cast – and expressively iconic -- like a drawing. Katy Cowan moves easily between media, inviting us to think carefully about the ways in which the materials of art and life figure externally our interior experience.
Katy Cowan (b. 1982, Lake Geneva, WI) received her BFA from University of Puget Sound (Puget Sound, WA) in 2004; and her MFA from Otis College of Art and Design (Los Angeles, CA) in 2014. Recent and upcoming solo and group exhibitions include Philip Martin Gallery (Los Angeles, CA); Green Gallery (Milwaukee, WI); Miles McEnery Gallery (New York, NY); Haverkampf Leistenschneider (Berlin, Germany); and Meyer Riegger (Berlin Germany). Additional museum and gallery exhibitions include “Lines of Thought: Gestural Abstraction,” Berkeley Museum of Art and Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley, CA); “Selections from the Permanent Collection,” Milwaukee Art Museum (Milwaukee, WI); “From the Collection of Anonymous,” North Dakota Museum of Art (Grand Fork, ND); and “as the sun chases the unfurling fray,” Philip Martin Gallery (Los Angeles, CA). Cowan’s work has been the subject of solo and group institutional exhibitions at Otis College of Art and Design (Los Angeles, CA); University of Puget Sound (Tacoma, WA); Lynden Sculpture Garden (Milwaukee, WI); Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (Madison, WI); Synchrotron Radiation Center (Stoughton, WI); Poor Farm (Manawa, WI). She has had solo gallery exhibitions at The Green Gallery (Milwaukee, WI); Document (Chicago, IL); Kate Werble Gallery (New York, NY); and Fourteen30 Contemporary (Portland, OR). Cowan’s work is in public and private collections such as Art, Design & Architecture Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, CA); (Milwaukee Museum of Art (Milwaukee, WI); Minneapolis Museum of Art (Minneapolis, MN); North Dakota Museum of Art (Grand Fork, ND); Lynden Sculpture Garden (Milwaukee, WI); Art in Embassies (Maputo, Mozambique); and Northwestern Mutual Insurance (Milwaukee, WI). Her work has been reviewed in Artforum, Los Angeles Times, Architectural Digest, Wallpaper*, Contemporary Art Review LA, Artnet, and other publications. Cowan lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
Haverkampf Leistenschneider is located at Mommsenstraße 67, 10629 Berlin, Germany. Gallery hours are 11-6 Wednesday through Friday and 11-4 on Saturdays. There will be a reception for Katy Cowan, Friday, July 4 from 6-8pm.
Katy Cowan "Built from Line" is part of a collaborative two-way exchange; in summer 2026, Philip Martin Gallery will host Haverkampf Leistenschnedier gallery artists in an exhibition exploring their respective practices. Katy Cowan's exhibition at Haverkampf Leistenschneider takes place alongside a group presentation of new and never-before-seen works by Kwame Brathwaite, Carl Cheng, Tomory Dodge, Sky Glabush, Laurie Nye, Sophie Treppendahl and Sung Jik Yang.
For additional information, please email info@philipmartingallery.com or mail@haverkampfleistenschneider.com.
