KATE BARBEE
BIO
Kate Barbee lives and works in Los Angeles, receiving her BFA in Studio Art from the University of Texas at Austin, TX in 2017. Barbee’s practice is an interdisciplinary one, ranging across hand embroidered mixed media painting, collage, drawing, and sculpture. The inherent tension in her work is born from a flurried relationship to her body and her visceral power within it. Barbee’s densely populated paintings pulse with an energetic sexuality. Her subjects push and pull through a fractured composition— intimately spaced and dynamically posed, creating an energy and rhythm which forces the eye on a nonlinear journey throughout the canvas. Barbee’s figures reveal themselves slowly as they engage in activity, and emerge from the tactile, multi-hued, collaged, and textile-laden canvases which they populate. Her works harnesses an exceptional degree of emotional and sexual directness and figural distortion which abstracts the figures beyond recognition and distances them from the activities in which they are engaged. Every painting is a snapshot of the self, taken from an angle removed from the moment as if floating above or next to it— raw, naked, and dominant.
CV
Feral Flora, Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles, CA February 2021
Art Basel with Kohn Gallery, Miami, FL, September 2020
myselves, Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, curated by Joshua Friedman
Frieze Art Fair with Kohn Gallery, June 2020
Armory Fair with Kohn Gallery, New York, March 2020
O-project Space, Los Angeles, Wyld Classic, group show February 14, 2020
GalleryALSO, Los Angeles, HYGIENE & OTHER SURPLUS, curated by Kate Barbee, November 16, 2019
James Wright Gallery, Los Angeles, Sweet Primal Things, November 15, 2019
WerkArtz, Los Angeles, Labyrinth of Language, October 5, 2019
UQBAR Gallery, Berlin, DICE THEORY, June 7, 2019
GalleryALSO, Los Angeles, Sensible Ecstasy, curated by Kate Barbee, April 20, 2019
GalleryALSO, Los Angeles, Like A Wet Braid, Jan 26, 2019
Herenowlosangeles, Grab Bag Studio art fair, Jan 19, 2019
Saatchi Gallery, London, Papercuts group show curated by Kristian Day, Nov 16 – 18, 2018
Visual Arts Center (Group Show), Mar 24 – Apr 7 2017, Austin, TX
Co-Lab Gallery, PLAYGROUNDS, Oct 8 – Oct 26, 2017, Austin, TX
A group show featuring eight exciting young artists exploring past, present and the desire for
a better future through various lenses
Activation Gallery, DIY Group Show, Aug 1 – Oct 1, 2016, Austin, TX
Dollhouse DIY Space, March 2016, Chicago, IL
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Sydney Walters, "myselves' at Kohn Gallery," Art and Cake, October 6, 2020
Cristina Samer, "Exploring Selfhood through Medium at Kohn Gallery, LA,"
Art of Choice, September 26
Margaux Bang, "27 Emerging Artists Reflect on the Impact of Isolation on
Selfhood and Community," L'Officiel Art, September 14
Barry Samaha "State of the art Industy in the Time of Coronavirus." Harper's Bazaar, May 7
"Art & Life with Kate Barbee," VoyageLA, May 21