Karin Davie: Symptomania

September 14, 2008 to February 2, 2009 |

Karin Davie is best known for her exuberant, colorful, and evocative paintings that use undulating stripes and contorted gestures to obsessively animate the canvas and immerse the viewer. The new paintings continue her interest in “the gesture” as image, perception, the body, and metaphor. The fluid athletic movement of the artist’s body in applying brush to canvas and the slapstick quality of the action create a subsequent physical mimetic experience for the viewer, who stands before a static object that appears to be in motion.

The exhibition title, Symptomania, a combination of the words “symptom,” which traditionally indicates a departure from normal function indicating the presence of abnormality, and “mania,” a severe condition characterized by extremely elevated mood and energy, offers an apt description of Davie’s latest body of work. Her inventive title indicates that something is awry. In these Symptomania paintings, sinuous strokes of alternating murky and vibrant color snake across the canvases; they suggest an abstract body that seems to be simultaneously under attack or in a precarious state of balance. This revealing and concealing gesture extends to the cast wall pieces, where the works are linked to the paintings as a play on the notion of gesture—“strokes are replaced by pokes”—and the tension between the perception of inside and outside.