THE GIBSON REPORT

ESSAY BY DAVID GIBSON The artist is a natural idealist who begins with form and ends with meaning. When Kathleen Elliot first began to discover herself as an artist she had an immediate interest in the use of glass to create forms reminiscent of nature itself—branches presenting leaves, flowers, and fruit, which over time coalesced into abstract forms as doppelgangers for the real objects she wished to emulate. Every artist develops a world view through their work that may not manifest in linguistic terms. However, the protracted activity of art making, developing the channels of meaning, and growing through the stages of one's discipline, makes one adroitly sensitive to the importance of a value system to accompany it. There is a fervor to the new way of thinking about how art can reflect life in these tumultuous days of political rancor. It’s been building for 20 years and is finally peaking in every corner of society.   The voyage of the artist is, less ...

TV 8 (Chicago), 2007 - 2008 chromogenic print mounted to plexiglas + wood frame    20 x 22 x 2   inches edition of 7 + 2 A/P   I have viewed Joy Episalla’s work in different contexts over the years, but it was only within the 2016 iteration of MoMA PS1’s “Greater New York” tercentennial that I was made specifically conscious of a body of work that surprised me. The work was a series of photographs taken in hotel rooms where the artist had stayed, in which she aimed her camera at the darkened TV screen to reflect the details of a used temporary residence, one that typically keeps no remnant of the visitor. As someone who spent a certain period of his life traveling for his career, and spending some time in such generic spaces, I was drawn to her series. The weighted existentialism of spatial portraits depicted in the uncharged screens of switched off televisions left me numb. DG: I was wondering if you could tell me h...