Katie Grinnan

Artist’s Statement

At the heart of my work lies a fundamental interest in the dislocated relationship between sight and the kinesthetic. The world of the kinesthetic involves the feeling of weight, gravity and motion. It is the space of the body and experience and resides outside of language. The world of sight is dematerialized, malleable and deceptive, reliant on our perception. The freedom of one’s subjectivity and the mind’s capacity to translate the outside world, manipulating and distorting objects to create its own construction of reality has always been fascinating to me. It is the alchemical yet paradoxical relationship between actual experience and our interpretations that has become the underlying focus of my work.

Integrating photographic imagery and structures is a way to explore the spatial and temporal aspects of this paradox. Viewing one’s perspective as a fluid topology, the photos act as skins of sight. Photography has also served as a way to make ‘site’ a portable material. Places that are now demolished and transformed are permanent in photos. I’m interested in the frozen, the fragile moment, and the entropy that occurs over time in both the physical and the photographic world. In my work, social, psychological, imagined, physical and visual space can exist simultaneously while the incongruities between the structure and surface of an object can be spotlighted.

Biography

Select Solo Exhibitions

2008
Polaris, MAK Center, Los Angeles

2006
Cheerleaders and Bandwagons, ACME., Los Angeles

Select Group Exhibitions

2009
Second Nature: The Valentine-Adelson Collection at the Hammer, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles

2008
On Procession, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Ind.

2007
Reflecting Another Space: Arocha/Schraenen, A Van Kerckhoven, Katie Grinnan, The Agency, London

2006
Interstate: the American Roadtrip, Socrates Sculpture Park, curated by Alyson
Baker, Robyn Donnahue and Andrea Zittel, Long Island City, N.Y.

Select Community-Based Artwork

2010
Workshop, New Everyday Life, Joshua Tree, Calif.

2006
Inverse Parade, High Desert Test Site 5, Joshua Tree, Calif.

Fellowships and Awards

2007
AXA Artists Award

2006
Guggenheim Fellowship

EDUCATION

1999, M.F.A
University of California, Los Angeles

1992
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, Maine
B.F.A., Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pa.

1991
Studio Arts Center International, Florence, Italy