Kathryn Cornelius' long awaited solo debut hits town this weekend. Kathryn has gained noteriety in the last year for her performance pieces including my favorite Art Services (Waste), where she exposed art's shadowy contribution to gentrification. Common Ground will be a collection of several long standing projects in her body of work.
Cornelius is much more heady that most DC artists. She's mildly interested in object and buried in the idea, which makes sense for a performance/video artist. Somehow she still manages to translate her head space into beautiful images. I've had the privilege of seeing a couple of her new videos and they're beautiful meditations. She often uses her own image in her work but not as a self portrait, more as a reference point for the viewer. She allows you to share the space with her. Which is amazing since I often feel like I'm being pushed against glass by many contemporary video artists.
Nature, landscape and sunshine on water, these are a few of least favorite subjects. Cornelius reintroduces them as tools to communicate shared miscommunication and steps away from the gilded art culture she loves to critique. Her video Common Ground (version 1.0) uses triptych composition and pairs it with what seems like discount closed captions. Her captions express impossible interjections, like "[....]" which I think is silence but could be anything.
Saturday, November 3rd, 6-8pm
The Curator's Office
1515 14th Street NW
(the show runs through December 22nd)
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