KEMBRA PFAHLER
“SLIPPERY WHEN DEAD”
PERFORMANCE: Thursday, July 23rd from 7-9pm
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KATSU DOT
July 9 – August 23, 2020
The Hole has announced a special performance by Kembra Pfahler in their new storefront window zone taking place on Thursday July 23rd. Debuting new songs and new sculpture, Pfahler is inspired in this new body of work by places her father surfed in California and takes its title from the 1959 Bruce Brown surfing film her father starred in.
Observing social distancing by containing the performance in the storefront, completely closed off to the public, Pfahler’s new work will be viewable through the window from the street, and there will be a little hangout zone for extra room out there. Get there early for the best view!
Also on view at the Hole is a new solo exhibition titled “Katsu Dot” by new media artist KATSU, a one-name moniker that comes from graffiti practices describing this Japanese-American artist. Since his first show in 2015 where he debuted paintings made by flying a prototyped drone, the artist has researched and developed more sophisticated ways of painting in this manner: two years ago he debuted programs that allowed the drone to write text, last year in collaboration with Tsuru robotics in Moscow developed fully autonomous painting drone systems. In this series the artist seeks a machine-based abstract painting whose composition and style is dictated by his drone process.
This exhibition is a total installation, hanging seven blank white canvasses and then destroying the room with drone spray. Using new tech he developed in Russia with programmers and engineers, KATSU can fly the drone to spray a programmedly random pattern of dots. The installation was completely laid out by drone including the composition of each painting. Extracted from their enameled environment, as is the work on the rear wall, the paintings can be considered like a traditional work of abstraction, perhaps part of the lineage of Warhol’s mediated and mechanized practice. But even when literally removed from their process-driven context, there are visual clues in the finished painting that suggest the works were not made by hand—or human.
KATSU (b. 1982) developed his art and technology practice as a research fellow with Free Art and Technology Lab, a collective of creative technologists and hacker artists (2007-2015). He has exhibited work at Fondation Cartier, Eyebeam, Diane Rosenstein Gallery, Coney Art Walls, “Beyond the Streets” curated by Roger Gastman, and numerous other exhibitions. His work has been written about in publications from Wired to the New York Times.
To learn more go to http://theholenyc.com/
