Katya Tepper
Hysteric Signs
27 Sep - 15 Dec 2018
KATYA TEPPER
Hysteric Signs
27 September – 15 December 2018
White Columns is pleased to present Katya Tepper’s first New York solo exhibition. This exhibition, entitled 'Hysteric Signs,' is composed of 4 large wall sculptures.
Tepper’s work is informed by the lived experience of chronic illness. The forms and processes in 'Hysteric Signs' reimagine the grotesque body as a site of joy and whimsy. They formally delight in the messiness of sickness, and revel in disturbing the border between the body and its environment.
Initially, the large, clunky wall sculptures resemble the oversized road signs that loom over the American landscape. Like the architectural signs of strip malls and billboards, Tepper’s sculptures claim and mark space as frontal designs, with bold colors and graphic shapes related to painting. Upon closer inspection, they reveal a dizzying and layered sculptural language full of holes. The materials interweave, exposing an infrastructure of entangled networks, processes, and objects. Toilet plungers penetrate industrial felt shapes, eggshells protrude from poured latex pools, plastic thread spools plug surfaces of caulk and cloth, while wax clogs the pores of old, dirty bricks. As if there is something violent and insistent about their being, the works in 'Hysteric Signs' refuse to differentiate between internal and external.
The works are a synecdoche that privilege organs, objects, letters, and roads, creating interrelated parts for the interrelated whole. Tepper scrambles language, symbols, and gestures, and the resulting abstracted forms are multiple in their associations. Deliberately heavy-handed but equally playful, the works in 'Hysteric Signs' celebrate the irregular, nonsensical, unruly, raw, and screaming.
Katya Tepper (b. 1987, South Florida) lives and works in Athens, GA. Tepper earned a BFA from the Cooper Union in 2010. In 2017, Tepper received a Wynn Newhouse Award and MacDowell Fellowship, which partially supported the work in this exhibition. Tepper also has a solo exhibition, currently on view at the Atlanta Contemporary.
Hysteric Signs
27 September – 15 December 2018
White Columns is pleased to present Katya Tepper’s first New York solo exhibition. This exhibition, entitled 'Hysteric Signs,' is composed of 4 large wall sculptures.
Tepper’s work is informed by the lived experience of chronic illness. The forms and processes in 'Hysteric Signs' reimagine the grotesque body as a site of joy and whimsy. They formally delight in the messiness of sickness, and revel in disturbing the border between the body and its environment.
Initially, the large, clunky wall sculptures resemble the oversized road signs that loom over the American landscape. Like the architectural signs of strip malls and billboards, Tepper’s sculptures claim and mark space as frontal designs, with bold colors and graphic shapes related to painting. Upon closer inspection, they reveal a dizzying and layered sculptural language full of holes. The materials interweave, exposing an infrastructure of entangled networks, processes, and objects. Toilet plungers penetrate industrial felt shapes, eggshells protrude from poured latex pools, plastic thread spools plug surfaces of caulk and cloth, while wax clogs the pores of old, dirty bricks. As if there is something violent and insistent about their being, the works in 'Hysteric Signs' refuse to differentiate between internal and external.
The works are a synecdoche that privilege organs, objects, letters, and roads, creating interrelated parts for the interrelated whole. Tepper scrambles language, symbols, and gestures, and the resulting abstracted forms are multiple in their associations. Deliberately heavy-handed but equally playful, the works in 'Hysteric Signs' celebrate the irregular, nonsensical, unruly, raw, and screaming.
Katya Tepper (b. 1987, South Florida) lives and works in Athens, GA. Tepper earned a BFA from the Cooper Union in 2010. In 2017, Tepper received a Wynn Newhouse Award and MacDowell Fellowship, which partially supported the work in this exhibition. Tepper also has a solo exhibition, currently on view at the Atlanta Contemporary.