Kate Burling. Softness as a Torrent

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In Softness as Torrent (2024), Kate Burling uses painting to investigate ideas of force and divinity, exploring through image-making how potency and gentleness might occupy the same space. The paintings receive dimensions and depth through a set of signs: shapes which repeat and differ. A smooth, disk-like circle reoccurs most often. Sometimes it is falling, flooding the image in swarms. Elsewhere their softened edges give way to another image: the ovular shape of a bell, the roundness of St. Sebastian’s nipple. Sharper forms take shape too, in the tubular arrows of ‘Sebastian With Trumpets’ (2024), or in a downpour, deflecting off the umbrella’s surface in ‘Me and You (Air-screw)’ (2024).