KATES-FERRI PROJECTS is thrilled to announce multidisciplinary artist Karo Kuchar has been selected for the 2024 NADA House presentation titled "Bathing In Space" on Governors Island in the New York Harbor.

The sixth edition of NADA House, this collaborative exhibition brings together twenty-one artists presented by seventeen art galleries and art spaces. Participating artists engage the unique character of the nineteenth-century military residence with art works in a diverse range of mediums. The exhibition opens to the public on Tuesday, September 3, and will be on view through October 27. Opening week features special hours and a reception on Friday, September 6, from 2–5pm at Nolan Park House 17 on Governors Island. The exhibition and opening events are free and open to the public; no RSVP is required.

For NADA House, as a starting point of inspiration, the artist finds abandoned buildings and apartments in her city of Vienna. Through a process using binding agents, she transfers old plaster, crumbling wall paint, dirt, wallpaper remnants, and layers of past times onto permeable fabrics. In turn, these are then sewn together with transparent fabrics, creating abstract and referential items of the world, such as hugely large bathing suits that hang loosely on copper hangers in the room. In doing so, 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.

On view at NADA House on the 2nd floor is free floating 8-ft bathing suit, titled Space Suit VIII, allowing the attendees to view the sculpture from all angles. The Space Suit consists of a paint-ladden wine-red synthetic organza fabric with pink and sink pieces and a braided cord detail sewn together. The oversized 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 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. Kuchar’s 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.

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 economic market.                                    
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.

Follow Karo Kuchar on IG @karokuchar

Video of exhibition on YouTube