AISHONANZUKA is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of US artist Katelyn Ledford “Underbelly”, which will be Ledford’s first solo exhibition in Hong Kong .
Katelyn Ledford is an artist living and working in Boston, Massachusetts, but born and bred in the American South. She received her MFA in Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2019.
Ledford’s work is a consideration of the role of images in shaping the curated portrait of women at large and individually while also reflecting on the complex and often painful reality of what it means to be a woman and artist. She uses appropriated images sourced from historical paintings, television shows, social media, and Google fever dreams while contrasting them against improvisational symbols and shapes in order to create deconstructed portraits. The tone across her work lies in a mix of cynicism, humor, and absurdist logic— like the feeling of sucking on a sour candy, you smile through the pain and pleasure.
In “Underbelly,” Ledford focuses on the joys, anxieties, ridiculousness, and cynicism within the art world as a non-art native, woman, and general cynic. Each work, through trompe-l’oeil painting, reflects the back of its own surface as an approach to revealing the literal and figurative backside of art and the untamed world around it. Unruly visuals find shape into crude smiles and frowns only then to throw off any sort of stability and coherency in tone. The viewer is left to decipher coded messages and disparate imagery while being fooled and tricked with illusionary painting and clumsy heaps of paint. If you can’t laugh about it, you may cry, so just lean into the absurdity of the (art) world around you and be the best backseat driver.
Ledford was featured in SPRING/BREAK Art Show 2020 in a two-person booth, “The Person- Less Portrait,” curated by Abigail Ogilvy Gallery. She has been featured in exhibitions internationally with select group exhibitions at Monya Rowe Gallery, New York, NY; Public Gallery, London, UK; Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, Boston, MA; and Plan X Art Gallery, Milan, IT.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2021
Untitled, DUVE Berlin, Berlin, DE (forthcoming)Untitled, Aishonanzuka, Central, HK (forthcoming)
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2021
In Crystallized Time, Museum of Museums, Seattle, WA (forthcoming)
Fantasy World, Galerie Slika, Lyon, FR (forthcoming)
A Vase Is a Vase Is a Vase, Deanna Evans Projects, Brooklyn, NY (forthcoming)Over the Borderline, Galeria Fran Reus, Palma De Mallorca, ES
Back Together, Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, Boston, MA
CURE/rated: Bigotry, A Societal Cancer, House of Fine Art, London, UK
Cave Canem, Eve Leibe Gallery, London, UK– online
Unmasked, Southern Vermont Arts Center, Manchester, VT
2020
Universes 3, WOAW Gallery, Wan Chai, HK
Bull in a China Shop, Tchotchke Gallery, New York, NY– online
Oh To Be a Painting, Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, Boston, MA– curator
Katelyn Ledford, Shelter in Place Gallery, Boston, MA
Drawn Together, Unit London, London, UK– online
Cut, Copy, Paste, Plan X Art Gallery, Milan, IT
No Time Like the Present, Public Gallery, London, UK– online
The Person-Less Portrait, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, New York City, NY– two-person booth
2019
Woven Profiles, Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, Boston, MA
Eye Contact, AREA Gallery, Boston, MA
RISD Second Year Grad Show, Monya Rowe Gallery, New York, NYRISD Grad Show, Rhode Island Convention Center, Providence, RISmear Frame, Digital Commons, Providence, RI
Fresh Faces, Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, Boston, MA
