.jpg)
Cat Gunn
On View: November 19, 2019 - January 10, 2020
Opening Reception: Wednesday, December 18th, 2019 | 6pm - 8pm
Hotel Indigo | 24 West Franklin Street | Free & Open to the Public
Maryland Art Place (MAP) in partnership with Hotel Indigo, are pleased to present its last exhibition of the year, Super Bloom, at Hotel Indigo by introducing new works by Baltimore based emerging artist, Cat Gunn! As an abstract painter, Cat is known for re-interpreting the boundaries of the traditional canvas. Gunn's paintings will be hung in Hotel Indigo’s library and Poets Modern Cocktails and Eats. The reception will be held on Wednesday, December 18th from 6 to 8pm.
Artist Statement
"My work pushes notions of androgyny and queer, combining both masculine and feminine qualities to establish something that is gender-neutral, gender fluid, transgender, or gender queer. My practice serves as rigorous experimentation that employs a scientific approach; I often juggle multiple paintings and add layers
simultaneously to each current work, marginally altering a property to study the outcome. I also employ craft materials, primarily glitter, in order to recall femme, makeup, club, or drag cultures. Assorted recipes bring about diverse results, allowing my work to be a survey of potentially queer objects.
Being a painter who is strongly concerned with materiality, I allow the physicality of my work to arise from the alchemy of the paint. I often use various mediums and processes to create paint from scratch, break it down, change opacity and viscosity, adjust chromatic properties, or alter surface qualities as I feel needed. Various types of paint mixtures are layered over time, only to be smeared, scraped, and sanded, charging the
work with a visceral energy that refers back to the physicality of process and the body. The process of covering and erasing these layers I have built up creates a back-and- forth of additive and subtractive, an accumulation and a diminishing. My current paintings revolve around the notion of creating space, particularly through abstraction from a queer perspective with a playful awkwardness. These self-contained worlds are made up of repeating stripes, gradated forms, twisted squiggles, and organic shapes. Skewed geometry with hard edges flirt with expressive grounds and fields of color, creating an ambiguous space that is dizzying, strange, and dynamic. The quirky geometry and irregularity of patterns allow for vulnerable and imperfect moments, and are equally about sameness as they are about difference. The work, both as physical objects and as windows into an illusionistic world, suggests a transfer between states— erratic and ever-evolving."
Cat Gunn is an artist living and working in Baltimore who identifies as non-binary transgender and queer. They create abstract paintings with layers of oil paints and mediums built up over time, using a variety of techniques to manipulate the alchemy of the paint. Gunn has recently exhibited work at Terrault Contemporary in Baltimore, MD, Maryland Art Place in Baltimore, MD, Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA, 40 West Arts Gallery in Lakewood, CO, and Ashton Gallery in San Diego, CA among others.Gunn received a BFA in Painting from Towson University.
.png "William.G.Baker")
.png "Glass and Associates"){kind=logo}
.jpg "Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance (GBCA)")
.jpg "Landmark Partners")