New #soloshow opening on Thursday, October 1st from 5.30 p.m. to 8.30 p.m. at Atelier Les Charrons in Saint-Étienne, France! The exhibition will be on view from October 1st-14th and by appointment at contact@kasiaozga.com . More info available via the Skinscapes Facebook Event Page.
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By applying human skin as a surface to inanimate objects and imaging how painted surfaces function as a kind of skin, Ozga considers membranes as a metaphor for our interactions with the outside world. The exhibition, Skinscapes, includes ceramic sculptures from the Clay Body Protocol Series, foam-filled sculptures of a stack of lifejackets, painted found canvases, and relief/wall-hanging works that mix painting, soft sculpture, and photography.
The collection of works from 2019 and 2020, many produced during the lockdown period from March-May of this year, embrace random, unintentional processes. Different production techniques, including printing, sewing, painting, and glazing, produce various textures and variations upon a common color palette.
Implicit in the title, Skinscape, are the words “skin” and “escape.” These two notions are somewhat antithetical; our skin is something that we are born with, that we may try to alter or adorn, but that we cannot literally escape, as long as we are living. Our thoughts and our actions, born within the confines of our bodies, reach outward, attempting to surpass this physical envelope to our being. As recent events highlight, the nature of our skin can both admit us to and exclude us from physical and social spaces. In depicting skin in various states, Ozga evokes the paradox of bodies as places of confinement and sites of becoming.