Katya Tepper
Region: South
My work is informed by the lived experience of chronic illness. The
forms and processes in my sculptures reimagine the grotesque
body as a site of joy and whimsy. They formally delight in the
messiness of sickness, and explore digestion as a metaphor for
how the body translates its environment.
Initially, my large-scale, clunky wall sculptures resemble the
oversized road signs that loom over the American landscape. Like
the architectural signs of strip malls and billboards, my sculptures
claim and mark space as frontal designs, with bold colors and
graphic shapes related to painting. On closer inspection, they
reveal a dizzying and layered sculptural language defined by
holes. The materials interweave exposing an infrastructure of
entangled networks, processes, and objects. Toilet plungers
penetrate industrial felt shapes, eggshells protrude from poured
latex pools, plastic thread spools plug surfaces of caulk and
cloth, while wax clogs the pores of old, dirty bricks. As if there
were something violent and insistent about their being, they
refuse to differentiate between internal and external.