“...it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what descriptions describe descriptions, what ties tie ties.” —Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble

CaitlinKeogh Bortolami 2020 Install 04

Starting off the new year with a bang, Bortolami Gallery in NYC recently opened Knots Knot Knots, a group of new paintings and drawings by New York artist Caitlin Keogh. The second solo show with the gallery, the exhibition depicts language as a fragmentary and unresolved environment. In these pictures, a malleable ribbon or string is shown as a figure (noun), or it describes a condition, imposing (verb) on another figure. This ribbon or string is a materialization of the black line that is the primary descriptor of the artwork's visual language, looping through an incomplete alphabet, a book with no text, and a reader who cannot speak. The body is the site of processing this line, both literally and metaphorically. In the viewing room, the black line continues in decomposing technical drawings of flowers, framed between glass and mirror.

Knots Knots Knots is on view at Bortolami Gallery through February 15, 2020. 

CaitlinKeogh Bortolami 2020 Install 12