Grace Graupe-Pillard Movie/Art Reviews : KATHARINE KUHARIC EXHIBITION "THE FOLIATED ROOM" AT PPOW GALLERY

Tuesday, December 19, 2023

KATHARINE KUHARIC EXHIBITION "THE FOLIATED ROOM" AT PPOW GALLERY

Katharine Kuharic at PPOW

THE FOLIATED ROOM 12/15/23 - 1/27/24

Cenotaph, oil/linen, 40x60inches, 2020

I spend days walking around looking at art and am rarely inspired to examine what I see. Rarely do my flitting eyes widen becoming a leash tightening around my neck pulling me towards work transmuting into a face-to-face intimacy as I closely examine what so attracted me. My taste is very broad as I am not frozen in one style - artworks must bleed a presence that exudes sensitivity and individuality resulting in beauty - be it a shout or a whisper that touches my gut and conscience. Always a rare occurrence but Katharine Kuharic’s exhibition will be affixed to my memory.

I walked into PPOW Gallery and I saw color - closely hued tonalities from a vast spectrum of pigments - some were complementary colors, but so closely hued that I thought of Gauguin and his flattening of space through disparate colors creating lyrically harmonic paintings. Once I got close to the work I saw the camouflaging of imagery done with a hand that was so delicate that I became lost in the patterning. Kuharic’s touch is light and fragile but always sensual as if she were tenderly wrapping her fingers around the subject matter - be it foliage or hidden birds waiting to emerge through time and our apprehension of them.

Like her early paintings, mortality is a constant theme intertwined with the awareness not only between growth and decay but how climate change further impacts our Universe. In some recent works, beautifully painted realistic images of a kitten - no longer obscured - come to the foreground gazing at us with a wistful gaze as if to question what we the caretakers have done to our sacred land. Often black and white birds float in the sea of color like witnesses to the defilement of nature’s beauty. And yet these paintings have an optimism akin to the sublime radiance of jewel-like treasures.