Art on Campus - Virginia Katz

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VIRGINIA KATZ

Drawings made by branches in wind.

Offshore Flow - 8 Hours, Silver, 10/05/08, 2008
Virginia Katz
Metallic Ink on Black Paper
44.5 x 30 inches
Location: Physical Sciences Building, First Floor

Virginia Katz might be best described as a metaphysical naturalist, invested, as she is, with all the observational intensity of a trained scientist, but forever extrapolating from any specific findings to explore the existential consequences therein. In her work, she has mapped the wind, charted ocean tides, and, most recently, created textural topographical prints and three-dimensional landscape paintings that acknowledge the collaboration of the non-human eye in our epistemological understanding of the broader environment. Katz spends a lot of time outside, often using the forces of nature itself to inspire or add new techniques to her work. She also often invokes the systems and methodologies used by scientists to measure and document natural phenomena. For the series, Wind (2000-2009), she tied strings to tree branches and attached pens to the end of those strings, allowing the wind to move the pens and mark the paper. She calls it “collaborating with the wind.” Recorded in Southern California, the series included recordings of Off-shore Flows, in which the wind came from inland, hot and dry, and On-shore Flows, in which the wind came from the Pacific and created high winds on the coast.

Virginia Katz lives and works in Irvine. She received her MFA from California State University Long Beach. Since 2009, she is a Moderator and Organizer of the bi-monthly Art Discussions at Eastside International, a residency and gallery in downtown Los Angeles. She has participated in residencies in Europe and New York and, in 2015, she was an award recipient of Seen and Heard Project, an anonymously founded initiative that bestows grant recognition without application to Los Angeles-based women artists. She has had several solo exhibitions with Ruth Bachofner Gallery in Santa Monica, as well as solo exhibitions with Mainframe Gallery in Seattle, Jancar Gallery in Los Angeles, d.e.n. contemporary in Culver City, and the Irvine Fine Arts Center in Irvine. She has exhibited in group exhibitions in galleries and museums throughout Southern California and has also shown in New York, Europe, and Asia. She has recently exhibited her work at the Pasadena Museum of California Art, the Riverside Art Museum, the Laguna Art Museum, and the Guggenheim Gallery at Chapman University.