Katy Cowan: Tape Drifts and Figures Reach

I have always appreciated the unpredictable nature of working. The working environment these works sprang from is an important part of the work. 

Two genres emerged when making this work: 1) a somewhat loud and highly expressive approach to figuration, image and color, and 2) very subdued compositions that emphasize the materiality of the casts. While these approaches might immediately appear as different, I find them to be similar, albeit at opposite ends of a spectrum. Both genres respond to the material surfaces of the metal castings; follow the cast lines; and ask the viewer to spend time looking.

There is a real emphasis on notetaking, drawing practices, and the painted mark in these works. I really wanted these pieces to look like sketches taped up on the studio wall—notes for ideas converged together—and for the painted mark to have a real physical presence. This is why the works have the look of collage in them that past works have not. I think this shows a vitality to the studio material and how it compiles. That is important to the finilization of these pieces.

The driving ideas behind these pieces are fragility, fragmentation, and residue. Fragility drives the work in the way that imagery is compiled; in the way the cast materials create imagery.

Fragmentation is how I approach making imagery—through fragments of representation that compile to form a whole. A guiding principle is the way memory fragments information. Another guiding principle here is how information compiles in the studio—through notes and sketches—and so some of these casts look like walls of my studio that combine to form an image. So, fragmentation comes forth in the way collage enters the composition of these casts.