Over the past sixty years, Gathie Falk has traversed the mediums of performance, sculpture, painting, drawing, ceramics, and installation establishing her practice as one of a true original. This exhibition continues Falk’s devotion and keen observations of everyday objects with the added, and perhaps unintentional, promise of rebirth by revisiting a number of ideas, from the idiosyncratic fruit piles that infuse minimalism with domestic content, to clothing elements that explore ritual, gender, and status.
Gathie Falk’s practice meticulously transforms objects of everyday experience into extraordinary things. Working in a variety of media that includes performance art, sculpture, ceramics, painting and drawing, Falk has produced works that feel surreal and dreamlike, reinventing clothing, fruit, plants, shoes, or baseball caps into objects of much greater significance. Although these objects are relatable in their familiarity, it is the personal symbols they carry – not the universal – that are of interest to Falk. Her practice has been aligned with the traditions of Surrealism, Funk, Fluxus, and Pop Art, but the influences are rarely direct. Indeed, Falk is most comfortable when poised on the edge of contradictions.