LISA BARTLESON KINDRED
Lisa Bartleson’s Kindred is a large-scale installation that explores healing in and by community. Using the Japanese tradition of kintsugi as an exercise of restoration, Kindred employs a visual discursive practice to examine the cracks caused by physical and/or emotional suffering, and the communal foundations of memory and recovery that filter, shift and support identity.
Over 200 slip casted porcelain objects have been manipulated and traumatized (cut, torn and wrapped in scrim) then kiln fired. Some objects are sutured, others bare scars highlighted with powdered gold simulating the kintsugi technique. Scrim and resin cast pigmented bio-resin paintings frame the installation, acting as immersive metaphors for the particular structures of identity. The scrim works are reductive and naked, referencing materiality through the imprint of the textile in the resin, signifying that the personal always contains elements of the universal.
The familiar, iconic nature of the house suggests the body and is a metaphor for personhood. Multiple houses create a community, bound together by shared experience and place. The cast paintings act as armatures for the house works, allowing the viewer to peer into and through skeletal structures that are foundational in acts of building and rebuilding. Placing the objects one foot above the floor allows the viewer multiple vantage points to access the work. From a standing position, the entire installation has a bird’s eye view, much like how people perceive and rearticulate memory. When the viewer bends down, gets low with the objects, the intimacy is profound. The object as body, scarred but beautiful, strong and elastic becomes central to the experience.
Kindred’s power as an aesthetic statement is enhanced through the visual narrative of people’s relationship to signifying objects as well as the sound of a baby’s heartbeat in the womb. Bartleson layers the experience with her own heartbeat, reminding us that we are all built from material, memory, and a universal cycle of life. The goal of the installation is to visualize healing, growth and community through an abstracted art practice. It is not intended as a treatise on abject beauty that questions order and meaning, but as edification of the beauty of seeing into ourselves, then relating that allegorically to art and community at large.
Over 200 slip casted porcelain objects have been manipulated and traumatized (cut, torn and wrapped in scrim) then kiln fired. Some objects are sutured, others bare scars highlighted with powdered gold simulating the kintsugi technique. Scrim and resin cast pigmented bio-resin paintings frame the installation, acting as immersive metaphors for the particular structures of identity. The scrim works are reductive and naked, referencing materiality through the imprint of the textile in the resin, signifying that the personal always contains elements of the universal.
The familiar, iconic nature of the house suggests the body and is a metaphor for personhood. Multiple houses create a community, bound together by shared experience and place. The cast paintings act as armatures for the house works, allowing the viewer to peer into and through skeletal structures that are foundational in acts of building and rebuilding. Placing the objects one foot above the floor allows the viewer multiple vantage points to access the work. From a standing position, the entire installation has a bird’s eye view, much like how people perceive and rearticulate memory. When the viewer bends down, gets low with the objects, the intimacy is profound. The object as body, scarred but beautiful, strong and elastic becomes central to the experience.
Kindred’s power as an aesthetic statement is enhanced through the visual narrative of people’s relationship to signifying objects as well as the sound of a baby’s heartbeat in the womb. Bartleson layers the experience with her own heartbeat, reminding us that we are all built from material, memory, and a universal cycle of life. The goal of the installation is to visualize healing, growth and community through an abstracted art practice. It is not intended as a treatise on abject beauty that questions order and meaning, but as edification of the beauty of seeing into ourselves, then relating that allegorically to art and community at large.
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