Katie Bell: Backsplash II

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Approaching this reactivation with the domestic language of remodeling, Bell ‘renovates’ the front project space: she lays new flooring, rearranges the deconstructed ‘furniture’ and adds new focal elements to the walls. Her sculptural language is populated by artifacts of home design and commercial interiors—markedly artificial materials from foam to laminate, plastic and composite wood that recall the economy and convenience of prefab housing. Slivers of an old hot tub, wall siding, and hurricane shutters, among other household effects, become painterly gestures that amount to brushstrokes and paint spatters across three-dimensional space.

In its original configuration, the installation was conceived between Locust Projects’ front and back project rooms: in the front was a wall-mounted sculpture that seemed to explode outwardly into the space; and the back contained an extended, almost stage-like environment bounded by cork flooring. The latter installation expanded Bell’s work, dispersing materials in space across fore-, mid- and backgrounds; a new and natural deviation for her practice. Together, these two works outlined a causal relationship: the catalyst of the explosion-like event in the front, with the aftermath of wreckage strewn in the back.

Backsplash II brings these materials into direct conversation—the artist transplants the elements from the back room and rearranges them into the front, foregrounding the cause and effect of the sculptural scene. The new linoleum flooring further transforms the space, inviting the viewer to enter the context of the installation; a sort of freeze-frame caught in mid-action between the bursting wall and the calm at its conclusion. The destruction is palpable. Objects pierce the walls, floor and one another, amid gestural gouges that signal an almost violent, painterly intervention. Here, the backsplash refers not only to the space as a backdrop to Bell’s work, but to the momentum of the objects around the room under the direct influence of the wall’s eruption.