Allison Katz

Throughout the exhibition Katz deploys a constantly evolving set of techniques and source materials. Echoes, rhymes and serendipities erupt; meaning is reordered and unexpected genealogies converge. ‘West’ is the neighborhood in which the gallery is located, the direction Katz’s apartment faces in London, a catch-all term for a geopolitical system in the midst of being challenged, and an alias for the pastoral patch of English countryside where she worked in residence (the West Country). While preparing for the exhibition she also visited the ruins of Pompeii, where the discovery of wall paintings buried under ash continues to play a central role in the origin story of Western figuration.

The triptych ‘Responding’ (2023) embodies Katz’s interest in perspectives and drives, and the potential boundlessness of painting. ‘Responding’ depicts the ‘primordial pond’ outside the studio in Somerset, where the artist observed hundreds of tadpoles evolving, literally growing legs in order to walk out of the water. Katz’s connection with the pond, witnessing ‘all the myriad forms of life teeming with change’ provoked the painting’s all-over surface and the idea of the mutating frame. Mud is conflated with cloud, water with reflection, the amorphous with the animal.

Roads and walking are active metaphors in Katz’s oeuvre, providing pathways to a particular viewpoint, representing the perpetual transit of process and thought, and operating as sites of connection. Literally drawing perspective into space, the artist’s road paintings illustrate ‘the confluence of being rooted in one place while thinking of another (and another).’ In ‘Truth’ (2023), the artist’s grandmother Ruth gazes at Giacometti’s sculpture ‘Walking Man’ (1960). Like the road, the pond, and the skylight, ‘Walking Man’ evokes an existential need for motion. The presence of sculpture in the painting is not just simulated. Acrylic modelling paste is used to literally sculpt the textured surface of the Giacometti work, disrupting the photorealism of the rest of the painting.

In ‘Ho!’ (2023), Katz pays tribute to Georges Seurat’s ‘Bathers at Asnière’ (1884), which includes what she has described as ‘surely the most famous ‘ho!’ (hollering) in all of art history.’ Her version of the well-known 19th-century painting zooms in on the boy positioned bottom right of the original painting’s frame, standing in the pond calling outwards, beyond the artwork’s boundaries. Connecting the work to the exhibition’s larger impetus, Katz states, ‘To loosely gather all into this title, ‘Westward Ho!’ speaks of yearning, of a call – for a response, for a lift… an invitation to ride somewhere, to be held for a moment in a frame gliding along the surface, evidence of life, as above so below…’

‘Allison Katz. Westward Ho!’ is on view now through 5 January 2024 at Hauser & Wirth West Hollywood. Please visit our location page to plan your visit.