contact + bio + statement
Contact: email: bkatz7@gmail.com
Instagram: bkatz7
BARRY KATZ BIO
Born in Baltimore, Barry Katz received his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and spent the next decade working as an art director. Later, after moving to Connecticut, he devoted his attention to landscape painting, and studied privately with Wolf Kahn.
During his years in Connecticut, he started and for twenty-five years ran a custom homebuilding business and became an authority on sustainable building practices. His book, “Practical Green Remodeling,” was published in 2010 by Taunton Press.
In the early twenty-teens he turned his attention to photography, shooting extreme close-ups of torn, layered advertising posters on walls around New York City, and the filtered light falling on submerged beach pebbles in shallow water along the coast of Cape Cod.
His current body of work consists of wall-mounted, undulating plaster forms which straddle the boundary between painting and sculpture, finished in a layered application of color from studio-made mixtures of pigment, lime, and acrylic binder. He also produces limited edition prints based on digital images created on the iPad.
Barry Katz currently lives and works in Harlem.
ARTIST STATEMENT
While the emotional impact of color has always been one of the central preoccupations of my practice, the current body of work also touches on ideas about identity, alienation and belonging, and a sense of otherness, of outsider status reflected in the work’s overall oddness and imperfect, hand-made lumpiness.
Operating as both painting and sculpture, these pieces could almost be described as non-binary. At the same time, the layered application of color carries the suggestion of something furtive, something hidden beneath the surface, addressing themes of concealment and disclosure.
These are all essential elements of what I would identify as a queer sensibility.
In addition, the motif of discrete forms arrayed across a horizontal field, which has been cropping up in my work off and on for decades, serves a dual role here, with layered readings that are specific and intentional. In one sense, it can be seen as a narrative element suggesting varieties of interpersonal relationships. Viewed through another lens, it bears distinct references to musical notation, paying homage to a family history that includes generations of musicians. (My maternal grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather were all violinists, part of a familial tradition that likely stretched back at least a few generations further.)
Following this line of thought, one of things I strive for is to make work that, to quote the critic Walter Pater, “. . . aspires towards the condition of music.” Though Pater’s writings predated by decades the advent of abstraction (or, perhaps more accurately, non-objective art), the kernel of his idea was to suggest the artist’s ambition to evoke emotions and states of being without recourse to language. This is precisely what music does.
In both the sculptural pieces and in my graphic work (under the Limited Edition Prints tab), the balancing of shape, color, density, weight, sequence, and carefully calibrated spatial relationships provides an analog to musical intervals, dynamics, tone color, rhythm, and the relationships between individual notes that produce chords, melody, inner voices, counterpoint, and an overarching sense of cohesion. As well, the color palette of a given work might be thought of as its key signature, providing a context in which deviations from the expected provoke moments of heightened drama.
Invoking elements analogous to those employed in music is, for me, one strategy for making objects that convey meaning through non-objective means. One strategy among many, but with deep roots in my own psyche and sense of self.
BARRY KATZ CV
EDUCATION
Maryland Institute College of Art, BFA, 1973
Private studies with Wolf Kahn, 1998-1999
EXHIBITIONS
2024
All Tomorrow’s Parties, M. David & Co., Brooklyn, NY
This is the Future of Non-Objective Art, Atlantic Gallery, New York, NY
2023
Object Matter, Caldwell Gallery, Hudson, NY
Summer Invitational, M. David & Co., Brooklyn, NY
Summer Group Show, Craighead Green Gallery, Dallas, TX
Volume Up: Artists Responding to Music & Sound, The Painting Center, New York, NY
New Painting, Site Brooklyn Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (Online)
Guild Abstract Exhibit, Silvermine Center for the Arts, New Canaan, CT
Strata II: Manifesting Through the Layers, Verum Ultimum Art Gallery, Portland, OR
2022
Hybrid Histories, M David & Co., Brooklyn, NY (3-person show)
Visual Alchemy, Amy Simon Fine Art, Westport, CT (3-person show)
2022 Guild Summer Salon, Silvermine Center for the Arts, New Canaan, CT
Lucky Charms, Mojos, Signs, and Cyphers, Truro Center for the Arts, Truro, MA
Break of Day, Edge of Night, The Painting Center, New York, NY
Seeing Red, Art Fluent (Virtual exhibit)
2021
Wax Applications: University Gallery, Texas A&M University-Commerce, TX
Paint 2021, Silvermine Center for the Arts, New Canaan, CT
New Members Exhibit, Silvermine Center for the Arts, New Canaan, CT
2019
Winter Residency Exhibition, M David & Co., Brooklyn, NY
84th Annual National Exhibition, Cooperstown Art Association, Cooperstown, NY
50 States, 200 Artists, Museum of Encaustic Art, Santa Fe, NM
Anything but Flat, Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill, Truro, MA
2018
7th Annual Encaustic Exhibition, Morpho Gallery, Chicago, IL
Global Warming is Real, Museum of Encaustic Art, Santa Fe, NM
2016
Solo exhibition of photographs, Ray Wiggs Gallery, Provincetown, MA