Kate Mosher Hall: The Reminder. Installation documentation, Audain Gallery, 2023. Photos: Rachel Topham Photography.
Kate Mosher Hall: The Reminder
June 9 – August 19, 2023
Audain Gallery
Kate Mosher Hall’s recent work queries positionalities – how differences in social position and power shape identity and access in society – and considers the potential of what bodies can perceive within an image, as well as how modes of reproduction in painting and printmaking practices allow for experiences available to bodies of survivorship.
The Reminder consists of halftone wag, a swing within a temporal frame in the elongated, endless minutes of survival. Acute imaginations, and the reminder of a traumatic event, are filtered and distilled to greyscale, and simplified information is assigned to relevant categories that require a constant and sustained awareness: with, behind, looking through, diffusion, in front of, covered up, opacity, unknown.
Hall subverts the physiological way that we perceive the appearance of colour and shades, obfuscating content by layering ink, with emphasis on negative spaces present as an allegory to othered perspectives. The paintings carry a density of illusion that oscillates in relation to how a viewer orients their own body adaptively to the work.
Curated by Kristy Trinier
Kate Mosher Hall’s paintings aim to “create space” and cultivate a special kind of “openendedness.” Often combining figurative and obfuscated elements, her images hint at narrative structure, only to stymie pat interpretation and closed meaning. Hall’s works oscillate between frank acknowledgement of her materials—flat planes, paint, printing screens—and a seductive illusionism that draws on illustration and found images. At times the works emphasize duality and fragmentation, and at others they underscore the merger of forms and ambiguity. In playing with such structures, Hall not only seeks visual stimulus but also intrigue and psychological affect. Indeterminacy and enigma, as she puts it, allow for visual complexities that are “allegories to life experiences and broken conditions that I ultimately celebrate.”
Kate Mosher Hall lives and works in Los Angeles. She received her MFA from UCLA. Recent solo exhibitions include Offset at Tanya Leighton, 2021; Without a body, without Bill at Hannah Hoffman Gallery, 2021; LOQK, Artist Curated Projects, Los Angeles, 2019; and Wind Breaker, Phil Gallery, Los Angeles, 2019.
Events
Opening Reception
Thursday, June 8 / 7 – 9PM
Audain Gallery
Exhibition Tour
Saturday, June 10 / 2PM
Audain Gallery
SFU Galleries is generously supported by Simon Fraser University, the Canada Council of the Arts, and the British Columbia Arts Council, along with numerous foundations, community partners, donors, and volunteers. We are especially grateful for the visionary support of the Marianne and Edward Gibson Trust. Thank you to Hannah Hoffman, Los Angeles for exhibition support.
Special Project
The Reminder: Community Print Project
June 9 – August 19, 2023
Audain Gallery
