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“I attempt to create a narrative that has no beginning or ending or clear outcome” - Kate Gottgens says about her work.
A contemporary South African artist, Kate Gottgens regards herself as a conceptual painter, interrogating the how and why of representation and the mechanics of image-making. A lover of paradox and ambiguity she discourages a single definitive reading of her paintings, which are characterised by an atmosphere of half-forgotten impressions re-imagined.
Working from photographic sources, Gottgens manipulates her narratives to express her fascination with history, memory, psychological states, and a quality of mystery and possible disorder that threatens our everyday life
In ‘The Rising Sea” her palette has become muted and subtle. There is a quality of dream-like liminality in the shadowy half-defined figures and scenes that partially disappear and reappear.
However, paintings of Kate Gottgens possess one more extraordinary quality. When looking at her work the viewer finds oneself in a trap of ones own memories recreated by the artist. By playing with half-forgotten memories we are dragged back into our own past and one is mesmerized and rolled like a wave into a rising sea, raising to the surface the myriad of experienced feelings, which like souvenirs from the past will now float to the surface and remain conscious forever.
Kate Gottgens
NUNC Contemporary