KATES-FERRI PROJECTS is proud to participate at Untitled Art (Miami) with a two-person presentation with artists Karo Kuchar and Adelisa Selimbašić titled “The Skin We Live In” on view from December 4 to 8, 2024.

Both artists use the body, or its absence, as a starting point of their investigation, which - through a female lens – transforms bodies into abstracted landscapes.

Karo Kuchar strips entire walls, stripping them of their pigmented skin in order to put synthetic or natural matter back on them. In the process, fragile landscapes emerge, haptic topographies that envelop (material) body parts in the form of swimwear. In other works, the material's narrative potential and the network of relationships between space and body fill parts of organza fabric with skin-colored curves. Striped wall surfaces are stretched in between to show the fragmented body from behind. Sensual “soft sculptures” burst the frame in voluminous bulges, playfully arching into the room. Similar to the soft sculptures and the swimwear, Karo’s ceramics also aim to measure spaces, imagined bodies, surfaces, and materials. But ironically, she is interested in the immaterial, the intangible, which George Perec - in his book “Species of Spaces and Other Pieces“ - speaks of as the trappings, the "outside world, that which is outside of us, that in the midst of which we move, the environment, the space around.”

Adelisa Selimbašić layered, luminous oil on canvas paintings depict an unconventional perception of the body, with distinctly feminine and not objectified sensuality. Selimbašić wants viewers to accept their own bodies as alive, authentic, and perfectly normal, with all the cellulite, stretch marks, wide hips and scars. The exaggeration of scale, the subtle distortion of perspective, and the slightly strained poses of the elongated figures recall the Mannerist style of the 16th century High Renaissance, with its emphasis on emotion over naturalistic representation. The faces – when visible – appear vague, representing subjective identities. The chromatic focus is on the bodies – skin and flesh –, which begin to flow into each other, capturing the hidden intimacies of unguarded moments of physical contact. The bodies are portrayed in a dreamlike dimension, as if they were nymphs, whose carefree attitude is enhanced by the vivid and ethereal colors. The photographic cut chosen by the artist echoes the typical format of social platforms in which our ideals of beauty are created. But Adelisa’s paintings create a universe in which the sense of inadequacy, to which we are accustomed, has no place.

The duo presentation “The Skin We Live In” invites the viewer to a reflection about the physicality of the body, its spatial presence, and its ability to capture the human experience, at a time where social media and artificial intelligence are seducing us into a reality devoid of physicality.

Bio: Adelisa Selimbašić (b. 1996) is an Italo- Bosnian artist. In 2021 she graduated from Venice Academy of Fine Arts with a Master in Painting.                            

Artist Statement: I aim to create a world in which the sense of inadequacy does not exist – allowing for an unconventional perception of the body by playing with scenes from everyday life. With the use of the simplicity of the body, I transmute the idea of Femininity, focusing her research on human complexities.

The photographic format recalls social media platforms, giving a sense of familiarity and false intimacy. The faces appear vague, representing subjective identities. The sitters maintain attitudes and are transformed into generational archetypes. The bodies begin to flow into each other, alluding to metaphors.

Currently, my research is focused on the need, attraction, and tension of physical touch. The essence of the works is veiled by themes of body positivity, sisterhood, and feminism.

Bio: Karo Kuchar is a multidisciplinary artist of Czech and Polish origin born in Vienna (Austria). She graduated with a MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, 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 terms. My focus is on 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 a critical examination of society, as well as of (legal) aspects of art and the economic art 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. 

Available Art Work from Exhibition 

Video of exhibition on YouTube