Karen Schifano
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Evergreen Review: A Holding Pattern for Living: Christ Costan interviewed by Karen Schifano
3/9/2023
Karen Schifano: Ever since Chris Costan began making her series of art interventions—hand-painted and lettered posters inserted into urban and suburban landscapes—I’ve been impressed by her dogged persistence and focus; she seems to harbor little thought of reward or approbation. And I wanted to know why she began this project during, of all times, the start of the pandemic when most of us were isolating in our homes and studios. We are now in year three of Covid, and still “she persists” with subject matter that spans Greek mythology, climate change, apocalypse, female anatomy, and anything that strikes her curious mind. She posts her pieces in odd places, like on the side of a gas station or in an abandoned shop window, where anyone can stop and ponder them. Her beautiful (and not-always-identifiable) imagery and intriguing short narratives are at the very least attention grabbing. She later posts photos of these interventions on Instagram, sometimes with video or sound. Hers is a dedicated and disciplined practice, insistent and educational, admirable at a time when talk about art tends to gravitate to the marketplace and career. So I decided to ask her a few questions . . .
Betty and Veronica at Kathryn Markel Fine Arts
12/29/2022
Karen Schifano, “Tear-Sign,” 2022, flashe on canvas, 28 x 36 in.
KATHRYN MARKEL FINE ARTS PRESENTS A GROUP EXHIBITION CURATED BY ARTIST JOANNE FREEMAN
Betty and Veronica features paintings by Sarah Hinckley, Victor Kord, Margo Margolis, and Karen Schifano in New York City
January 5- February 11, 2023
Opening, Jan. 7th, 3-6pm
Press Release:
During the 1960’s and 70’s abstract artists were questioning the relationship
of painting to sculpture and the boundaries set between two and three
dimensional space. The ongoing exploration of space pushed painting towards
object-hood and created a hyper awareness of the painting's physical structure,
shape and edge. Emphasis placed on frames and edges implied both
boundaries and innity and led artists towards further experimentation with
process and structure. Mirroring qualities found in the more graphic
mediums of lm, photography and comics, abstract painters were disrupting the status quo of linear narrative as they considered multiple sides and angles to enter a picture plane.
Betty and Veronica was a comic strip that ran in mid-century America. The series featuring two opposing female characters, metaphorically suggests the ongoing overlap of high low culture. In the search for visual abstract language, artists in their studios have continuously balanced subjective inuence and spontaneous process with precedence and outside stimulus. The accomplished painters; Sarah Hinckley Victor Kord, Margo Margolis and Karen Schifano have built their work on historical precedence, but within that framework they speak of being alive in our time. In reverence to their predecessors, their work both charges and endures.
ABOUT KATHRYN MARKEL FINE ART
Established in 1975 with the belief that significant contemporary art can be beautiful as well as visually and intellectually rigorous, Kathryn Markel Fine Art is committed to the experience of discovery and collecting at the highest level. Committed to serving a deep network of collectors and institutions, Kathryn Markel Fine art showcases a diverse array of primary market artists, unified by excellence in their craft, compelling intellectual framework, and a love of the art-making process.
https://www.markelfinearts.com/
New York City
529 W 20th St. 6W New York, NY 10011
"Invisible Attraction" at Church of the Heavenly Rest
10/10/2022
"Askew" at DC Moore Gallery, 535 W. 22nd St., NY, NY
6/28/2022
DC Moore Gallery is pleased to present A S K E W, a group exhibition featuring works by Lisha Bai, Tom Burckhardt, James Esber, Chie Fueki, Mary Frank, Sharon Horvath, Mark Innerst, Yvonne Jacquette, Suzanne Joelson, Duane Michals, Carrie Moyer, Katia Santibañez, Karen Schifano, Leah Tacha, Barbara Takenaga, and Alexi Worth.
Over the past years, there has been a globally-shared unsettling of what we have understood as “normal” everyday life. As ideologies and supply chains become more fractured, and too many in power lead with misinformation, truth and fact seem to have taken on a strange flexibility, destabilizing our habits and assumptions in ways that can feel minor one day, overwhelming the next.The paintings, photographs, and sculptures in the exhibition reflect the many ways in which we have felt this unsettling, and been forced to look inside ourselves, attempting to reset. They suggest the discomfort—and precarious vitality— that can come from the state of being thrown off, of feeling askew.
The connections between these works are strengthened by what is absent: groups gathered, realistic portraiture, naturalistic landscapes. Instead, the artists here create abstract or coded meditations on our inner selves, our bodies, the cosmos, and the immediate environment. Like pieces of a puzzle, each fills in some of the subjective contours of our still-assembling sense of this uncomfortable time.
DC Moore Gallery is pleased to present A S K E W, a group exhibition featuring works by Lisha Bai, Tom Burckhardt, James Esber, Chie Fueki, Mary Frank, Sharon Horvath, Mark Innerst, Yvonne Jacquette, Suzanne Joelson, Duane Michals, Carrie Moyer, Katia Santibañez, Karen Schifano, Leah Tacha, Barbara Takenaga, and Alexi Worth.
