Digital Image Still, Bird Goddess, courtesy of the artist.
Kathryn Garcia (b. 1978, Los Angeles, CA) lives and works between Los Angeles and the Mediterranean. Inspired by her spiritual practice and travels to ancient and sacred sites, Garcia works in a variety of media, including site-specific performance, video, sculpture, and drawing. Provocative and oftentimes interactive, her work engages with the Goddess Archetype as a means of reclaiming identity vis a vis the female body. Garcia’s bodies - her body, or the constructed bodies seen in her drawings, are created as vehicles for spiritual experience where a fem-queer body becomes sacred site. Her interactive works explore themes such as healing, mindfulness, participation, interconnectedness, and the experiential in art and are meant as offerings to the public. These offerings take place within immersive sculptures that the artist considers temples. Early on in her career, Garcia worked on international projects with Emi Fontana and Rirkrit Tiravanija, such as Women in the City (2008), Palm Pavilion (2008) and Asile Flottant ( 2010). Garcia’s work has been exhibited in the US and abroad, including The Orange County Museum of Art, Santa Ana; LAXART, Various Small Fires, 356 Mission, and Harmony Murphy Gallery, all in Los Angeles; Pace Gallery, Invisible Exports, GBE, Participant, PS1-MOMA, all in NY; Ballroom Marfa, Texas; The Power Station, Dallas; Nina Johnson, Miami; Southard Reid, London; Embajada, Puerto Rico; Arredondo/Arozarena, Mexico City; and DESTE foundation, Greece.
Exploring the potency of deep, elemental feminine power and the quality of female corporeality that for many folks evokes a certain kind of planetary magic, Kathryn Garcia joins the ranks of artists across generations whose works have sought to give tangible form to this particular kind of energy. In The Feminine Divine — a suite of paintings, sculptures, and performance-based video — we encounter resonance with canonical practitioners like Judy Chicago, Hilma af Klint, and Ana Mendieta — but with a mindfully lighter, even minimalistic, aesthetic.
Kathryn Garcia
b. 1978, Los Angeles, CA.
Lives and works in Venice, CA
Selected Solo Exhibitions and Projects
2020 The Feminine Divine, Gavlak Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
A Wave and the Ocean, As part of Gatherings, LAND, Los Angeles, CA
Virtual Meditation and Sound Healing, OCMA, Santa Ana, CA
2019 Refugio Libre, Beta-Local, Puerto Rico
2018 gone, gone, way beyond, OCMA, Santa Ana, CA
2018 A Tanit, VSF, Los Angeles, CA
2015 Cuerpo Azul, Arredondo/Arozarena, Mexico City, Mexico
2014 I am Violet, Harmony Murphy Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
LAXart Benefit and Gala, Greystone Mansion, Los Angeles, CA
2013 The Riddle of the Sphinx, Young Art, Los Angeles, CA
2009 Suddenly...Summer, Venetia Kapernekas Gallery, New York, NY
Residencies
2019 Beta-Local, Refugio Libre, Puerto Rico
Group Exhibitions
2020 Star Goddess Island, Wonzimer, Los Angeles, CA
Barely, Curated by New Discretions, Future Fair Online, NY
2018 Remote Castration, LAXART, Los Angeles, CA
2017 Ours is a City of Writers, LAMAG, Los Angeles, CA
2016 Vapegoat Rising, Arturo Bandini, Ballroom Marfa, Marfa, TX
2015 He Put a Hot Fish in Her Navel, Embajada, Puerto Rico
7 Women, 7 Sins, Kunstraum, Brooklyn
2014 Great Expectations, 986 NE 84st, Miami, FL
Botanica, Invisible Exports, NY
Botanica, Carroll and Sons, Boston, MA
Another Cat’s Show, 356 Mission, LA
Maroon Belles, 4619 W Washington, LA
Re-Think Environment, Human Resources, LA
The Last Brucennial, New York, NY
The Whitney Houston Biennial: I’m Every Woman, Brooklyn, NY
Dirty Minds: Reading below the Frame, Rooster Gallery, NY
Staging Interruptions (Stream of Life), Southard Reid, London, UK
2013 Cinderella Ashtray, Concord Space, LA
System of Objects, Deste Foundation, Greece
Drive In, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, CA
Diamonds, Diamonds, Gallery Diet, Miami, FL
2012 Staging The World Performing The Floor, MOMENTUM|Worldwide, Berlin, Germany
The Affect Factory; Precarity, Labor, Gender and Performance, NYU, NY
Lo Carnivalesco, Mycellium Ingenium, Mexico City, Mexico
2011 Soft Machines, Pace Gallery, New York, NY
Queering Sex, Human Resources, Los Angeles, CA
The Next 100 Years, ICA, London, UK
2010 Multiple Pleasures, Tanya Bonakdar, New York, NY
Feast of Fools, Second-Floor, New York, NY
Sanctioned Array, White Box, New York, NY
The Collective Show, Participant Inc., New York, NY
Hollywood MerchMart, LACE, Los Angeles, CA
Efem, The Garment Room, New York, NY
An Evening of Uncontrollable Flesh, Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA
From NY With Love, Don’t Projects, Paris, France
2010 You Should Have Been Here an Hour Ago, Kunstverein, New York, NY
Brooklyn is Burning IV, MoMA/ PS1, New York, NY
Brucennial 2010: Miseducation, New York, NY
Invagination and the Death of a Hamster: For Those With and Without, New York, NY
2009 Brooklyn is Burning does Wildness, Imprenta, Los Angeles, CA
SWF Seeks Same, Second-Floor, New York, NY
October Group Show, Chime and Co., Los Angeles, CA
Sally’s, Larry’s, Berlin, Germany
Brooklyn is Burning III, Monkey Town, New York, NY
The Living and the Dead, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York, NY
BUTT in ASS, Asia Song Society (ASS), New York, NY
From NY With Love, Candela Gallery, San Juan, Puerto Rico
Can’t Rape the Willing, Second-Floor, New York, NY
Made For More, Chime and Co., Los Angeles, CA
Brooklyn is Burning II, Monkey Town, New York, NY
Anthology, Otero-Plassart, Los Angeles, CA
2008 Etrangetes Gifts, Jail Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Brooklyn Is Burning, Glasslands Gallery, New York, NY
Love in the USA, Louise T Blouin Institute, London, UK
The Left Hand of Darkness, The Project, New York, NY
Read My Lips, Peres Projects, Berlin, Germany
2007 WuTang/Googleplex Show (Congress), Passerby, New York, NY
2006 GRUPE, GBE@Passerby, New York and Mandrake, Los Angeles, CA
2005 Put It In Your Mouth / I'll see you on the dark side of the prune, Rivington Arms, NY
2003 Emergence, Track 16 Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Editorial Contributions
2020 LALA Magazine, "Living Through History, A Visual Time Capsule," Contributing artist
2018 Ecocore, Issue VII, "Cannabis," Contributing Artist
2014 Staging Interruptions (Stream of Life), The Magazine, Contributing artist
2010 The New Tough Magazine, Issue 2 “Heretics”, Contributing artist
2009 New Gentlemen’s Club, Winter 09 Issue, Contributing artist
The New Tough Magazine, Issue 1 “America”, Contributing artist
2008 Animal Shelter Magazine, Contributing editor with Hedi El Kholti and Semiotext(e)
2007 Daddy the Magazine (Issues 1, 2 & 4), Editor
Select Press
2020 Almino, Elisa Wouk. “What to Do (Online) This Week: Meditate with Art, Visit a Frank Lloyd
Wright House and More”, Hyperallergic, April 7, 2020
2018 Mizota, Sharon. “'Remote Castration': At LAXART, a provocative show about female power
and sexual violence”, Los Angeles Times, August 18, 2018
2014 Berardini, Andrew. “Copper Pyramid and Promethean Fire”, Artslant, Oct 09, 2014.
2013 The Journal Magazine, Entry No 32, 2013
2012 Dazed and Confused, Vol III/10, 2012
2011 Russell, Legacy. “Kathryn Garcia”, Nov 02, 2011.
Russell, Legacy. “Double Trouble: Kathryn Garcia of BDY DBL”, BOMBlog, Oct 03, 2011.
Gaebe, Carly. “Body Conscious: Soft Machines at the Pace Gallery,” Art in America, July 22, 2011.
Taft, Catherine. “Unconventional Wisdom,”, Artforum, July 6, 2011.
2010 Work Magazine, Issue II: Sexuality
"Made in America," Blast Magazine, Spring Issue
2009 Stillman, Nick. (2009, October) Kathryn Garcia at Venetia Kapernekas Gallery, Artforum p.241-242
Archey, Karen. "Art Fag City’s Fall Preview: Project Space Edition," ArtFagCity
Woo, Kim. "BUTT in ASS," The Cult Magazine Launches a Video Exhibition at Asia Song
2009 "Society that Replicates a Porn Shop," Dazed Digital
2006 "Five Artists to Watch," SOMA Magazine, December/January
2005 New York Times, Art Review; "Fanciful to Figurative to Wryly Inscrutable."
Public Collections
Deste Foundation, Athens, Greece
Sansab Museum of Contemporary Art, Bangkok
