Artist Talk: Friday, October 2 @ 5:30pm
Opening Reception: Friday, October 2, 6 – 8pm
Exhibition Runs: October 2 – 29, 2020
Splish Splash combines Caitlin’s paintings with Charis’s drop-shaped interactive soft sculptures in a bathtub that viewers are invited to play with. There’s a tension with vulnerability in bathtubs; the bather is in a position where they are very exposed, but simultaneously feeling safe, calm, taken care of, and even healed. The idea for this exhibition was born out of a mutual affinity for the quiet stillness shared with oneself in a bath. It is brave thing to want to address and share this vulnerability. We are making the private public and inviting people into this space. Juxtaposing paintings, with their rich history of non-tactility, against interactive soft sculpture creates another point of tension. We aim to take fine art constructs and break those down by inviting viewers to interact with certain pieces in the show.
About Caitlin Carcerano & Charis Fleshner
Caitlin Carcerano is a painter who lives and works in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her work centers around one woman in a space, which serves as an examination of how she spends her time alone in the spaces she occupies. Each painting exists as a moment in time that is part of a larger, overarching narrative, like a panel in a graphic novel. In her most recent work, bathtubs serve as a place where she can explore her relationship with vulnerability and the tension between feeling secure and feeling exposed.
Charis Fleshner is a mixed media artist who lives and works in northern Colorado. Her studio practice centers around play, tactility, and craftivism. Her most recent work involves interactive soft sculpture. Charis has been an art educator for over a decade and her experiences with children influence the way she approaches the gallery space and its historical constructs. She views bringing play and serendipity into the gallery space as a political act.
Neither artist is afraid of the personal and the tension vulnerability can bring into a public space. Though they work in two different mediums, both Caitlin and Charis embrace softness and a color palette that is unguarded and bright. Viewers are invited to explore their own ability to become vulnerable themselves. Combining painting and interactive soft sculpture creates many different entry points to experience the exhibition from. They also seek to push back against the notion that softness and vulnerability are exclusively feminine characteristics in a patriarchal society.