#NewsFlash | New Exhibition Features Painted Skin, Body Photos, Live Performance + More
BY QEDC It's In Queens
This artist isn’t afraid to get mud on her uniform.
Katy Martin paints directly on her skin, which she then photographs and prints on cotton rag paper. She also makes large-scale paintings with her body, by dipping her torso in paint and rubbing it down the side of the canvas.
Her new exhibition, Movement Scores, will be on display at The Garage Art Center in Bayside from Friday, May 7, until Sunday, May 30. True to her style, it will consist of photographs and large paintings on canvas.
Martin dived into this genre more than 20 years ago as a way to find herself, literally, within the language of abstraction and reshape it based on her own experience. She loves to investigate gesture in painting and how imagery plays on illusions of control about bodies and art.
“All my work centers around painting as performance, as an act that brings with it the artist’s whole body,” she states. “My photographs involve a performance for the camera…In the final images, my body isn’t exactly visible. It’s there, but not there, as the painting takes over.”
She continues: “My canvases also begin with a performative process. I dip my shoulder and arms into liquid paint and then rub them down the side of the canvas. It’s a simple movement that I repeat across the surface. I’m looking for a sense of rhythm in the marks.”
The opening reception is on Saturday, May 8, from 4 pm to 6 pm.
As part of the exhibition, Martin will offer a live performance, Movement Is a Mark, on site on Sunday, May 30, at 3 pm. She will create a new painting, using her body instead of a brush to apply paint to the canvas.
Stephanie S. Lee, a painter who teaches Korean folk art at Flushing Town Hall and works at Queens College’s Godwin-Ternbach Museum, created The Garage Art Center at 26-01 Corporal Kennedy St. last fall. The facility includes a gallery and an outdoor seating area. It’s not far from the Bay Terrace Shopping Center, and there’s free parking on the street.
Images: The Garage Art Center