KATES-FERRI PROJECTS is thrilled to announce Traveling Within Spaces, the upcoming solo exhibition of Austrian multidisciplinary artist Karo Kuchar, on view May 30th to June 15th at The B-Side located at 563 Grand Street, NY 10002 and with an artist reception on Thursday, May 30th from 6-8pm.

As this May’s residency artist, the artist presents works she developed before and during her time at Kates-Ferri Projects. Kuchar’s unique artistic approach involves using light to transparent fabrics that bind with wall paint or plaster from old, dilapidated buildings. Creating abstract and referential items of the world, such as swimsuits and bodies, Kuchar imbues her work with a sense of history and transformation, merging the past with the present and a sense of place in a tangible and evocative way.

Unlike Jackson Pollock or Damien Hirst’s use of wall paint through their own gesture or application, Kuchar’s equally aggressive practice strips walls of its paint—ripping it bare. The artist shared that the longer she leaves the binder-thickened fabrics on the walls, the greater the physical exertion it takes to remove the fabric, paint, and plaster from its rested state. Architecture and construction sites are socially coded as masculine. By provokingly rendering the spaces nude, Kuchar questions the gendered readings of her work as feminine while demonstrating the strength of fabrics and providing herself with the materials to create work. 

Using the transferred wall paint strips to construct oversized swimsuits, Kuchar’s centerpiece features her Space Suit (2024). Not her first foray into this series, the focal point consists of a paint-ladden wine-red synthetic organza fabric with pink and sink pieces and a braided cord detail sewn together. The swimsuit exemplifies the blurring of the boundaries between public and private spaces. The piece is hung so that the bottom of the suit touches the gallery floor, grounding it as a sculpture and transcending its appearance as a mere garment. This deliberate choice lends the works a sense of solidity and permanence, challenging viewers to reconsider their perceptions of clothing and space.

Although she has an MFA in expanded pictorial space, Kuchar does not consider her two-dimensional works as paintings. Seeing them more as objects with inherent materiality, she plays with the sheer quality and the opacity within each work. This distinctive method highlights the space of the body, the space of the room the wall paint once came from, the space outside, and the new room it now inhabits. By collapsing those spaces into one, Kuchar invites a layered reading of her work that serves as a metaphor for the fluidity of space and identity. In the latest iteration of her explorations, Kuchar began to stuff her works with polyester fillers which further allude to the body. The braid in her sculptural Space Suit bridges these two bodies of two-dimensional works. 

Last, but certainly not least, are Kuchar’s ceramic works. Continuing the cheeky beach theme, the artist made flip flops with a deep well for placing a small amount of colored water. By positioning a pair of these flip flops in front of the wall works, Kuchar places an invisible person before her work, thereby creating an installation. By generating an active dialog between the two works, the artist invites the body into her work in yet another way.   

The exhibition opens with a reception on Thursday, May 30th offering attendees the first opportunity to experience Kuchar’s art. This show is not only a testament to her innovative techniques and thought-provoking concepts but also an exchange between the personal and the communal space.

Bio: Karo Kuchar is a multidisciplinary artist of Czech and Polish origin born in Vienna (Austria). After completing her studies in law and some years of professional experience in this field she finally decided to apply at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, where she graduated with a MFA  in 2021.
After spending two years mostly living in Ecuador, Brasil and Argentina she was based in Paris until 2023. Currently she lives and works in Vienna. Karo Kuchar’s work has been exhibited in Europe, South Africa and the US. 

Artist Statement: My artistic approach is based on the idea of a symbiosis between the body and space in the widest sense of both of these terms. One focus lays in the different concepts of skin as a shell or the shell as a second skin, as well as the body as an architectural structure. My research revolves around utopian worlds of bodies, spaces, and materiality. At the same time, it includes an critical examination of society, as well as of (legal) aspects of art and the economicmarket.                                    
Since 2016 I have been “peeling” walls of old empty buildings or construction sites from the inside. I transfer everything that accumulated over the years to fragile transparent fabrics. Wallpaint, filler, dirt...Those fabrics with layers of old wall surfaces often form the base or inspiration for my future works. It is the history of those walls that determines the structures on the fabrics. The coincidence and the nature of the spaces play a major role.

Art Works on View  

Video of exhibition on YouTube