Aspen, Allison Katz's contemporary painting in dialogue with fragments of Pompeii frescoes

From May 30 to Sept. 29, 2024, In the House of the Trembling Eye, a large group exhibition by London-based artist Allison Katz will be on view in the entire AspenArt Museum in Aspen, organized in collaboration with the Archaeological Park of Pompeii. The research and concept development of the exhibition is curated by the artist herself and Stella Bottai, Senior Curator at Large, in curatorial dialogue with Nicola Lees, Director Nancy and Bob Magoon, Daniel Merritt, Director of Curatorial Affairs, and Simone Krug, Curator of the Aspen Art Museum. Marking the 45th anniversary of the Aspen Art Museum and the tenth anniversary of the Shigeru Ban-designed building, the exhibition, which incorporates works from personal art collections in and around Aspen, aims to highlight unexpected affinities among more than one hundred artworks and objects of different styles and eras, celebrating painting’s ability to generate new conversations over time.

The artist addresses curating and display as extensions of the act of painting itself. In the House of the Trembling Eye presents her works both new and recent alongside works by more than fifty artists and a series of fragments of frescoes from Pompeii. The mixed use of spaces in ancient domestic environments such as those in Pompeii as seen by the artist become key organizing principles for the architecture of the exhibition. The works are displayed within a specially designed environment that grafts the layout of ancient Pompeian domus into the museum, diversifying the atmosphere on all three floors of the building.

Using corridors, raised floors, partitions and curtains to orchestrate visitors’ movements and interactions, Katz’s exhibition also considers some of the fundamental questions of images: how they can inhabit a shared environment and how they can influence past and future patterns of thought. The exhibition will be the first in North America to combine contemporary art with these ancient fresco fragments, many of which have never been exhibited in the United States. Katz establishes formal and symbolic relationships between the ancient fragments and 20th- and 21st-century artworks, focusing on the emotional connections between their subjects through juxtaposition. Cultural residues, art history and autobiography thus enter into dialogue with memory, the unconscious and questions of taste. For over a decade, Katz has been investigating the ways in which aesthetic practices connect and absorb personal narrative, commodity culture, information circulation, and art history. Guided by the architecture of the exhibition, designed by Katz with Caitlin Tobias Kenessey, visitors join the chorus of these dialogues, engaged in the painting’s incessant performance of imagination.

In the House of the Trembling Eye is organized in collaboration with the Archaeological Park of Pompeii. Research on the exhibition was developed in the context of Allison Katz’s Digital Fellowship under the Pompeii Commitment program. Archaeological Matters at the Archaeological Park of Pompeii. Additional research support was provided by the Department of Asian, African and Mediterranean Studies at the University of Naples L’Orientale in Naples. The AAM exhibitions are made possible by the Marx Exhibition Fund. General support for the exhibitions is provided by the Toby Devan Lewis Visiting Artist Fund. Additional support for In the House of the Trembling Eye is provided by the AAM National Council, with special thanks to Hauser & Wirth. The exhibition is accompanied by a new catalog to be released in winter 2024, with new contributions by Nuar Alsadir, Stella Bottai, Saim Demircan, Hannah Johnston, Allison Katz, and Ariana Reines. The book is designed by Studio Mathias Clottu and made possible through the support of the ASOM Collection.

Artists in the exhibition include Gertrude Abercrombie, Rodolfo Abularach, Julio Alpuy, Janine Antoni, Herbert Bayer, Lynda Benglis, Kerstin Brätsch, Joan Brown, Maurizio Cattelan, Vija Celmins, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, René Daniëls, Marlene Dumas, Jana Euler, Sylvie Fleury, Lucio Fontana, Ellen Gallagher, Isa Genzken, Jeffrey Gibson, Robert Gober, Wade Guyton, Hugh Hayden, Eva Hesse, Damien Hirst, Jim Hodges, Roni Horn, Luchita Hurtado, Jacob Isaacszoon van Swanenburg, Rashid Johnson, Anish Kapoor, Allison Katz, Mike Kelley, Ellsworth Kelly, Bharti Kher, Karen Kilimnik, Yayoi Kusama, Nancy Lupo, Kerry James Marshall, Julie Mehretu, Joan Mitchell, Ephemera from the studio of Ron Mueck, Jill Mulleady, Elizabeth Murray, Alice Neel, Mary Obering, Elizabeth Peyton, Susannah Phillips, Gerhard Richter, Dorothea Rockburne, Ed Ruscha, Amy Sillman, Alina Szapocznikow, Paul Thek, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Fredrik Værslev, Cecilia Vicuña, Charline von Heyl, Cathy Wilkes, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Lisa Yuskavage, and anonymous Pompeian mural painters.

Notes about the artist

Allison Katz was born in Montreal, Canada, in 1980 and currently lives and works in London, England. She studied fine arts at Concordia University in Montreal and holds a master’s degree from Columbia University in New York. Katz’s work investigates the ways in which aesthetic practices connect and absorb autobiography, commodity culture, information systems and art history. His diverse images, including roosters, cabbages, mouths, fairies and noses, appear as recurring symbols and icons that build an endless constellation of ideas and references, which are conveyed through the mediums of painting, posters, ceramics and installations. Katz received widespread critical acclaim for her first traveling solo exhibition in the UK, Artery, at Nottingham Contemporary (2021) and Camden Art Centre (2022). The exhibition was accompanied by the richly illustrated publication Artery, which is somewhere between a monograph, an exhibition catalog, and an artist’s book. Other recent solo exhibitions were presented at Hauser & Wirth West Hollywood, Los Angeles, CA (2023); the MIT List Center for the Arts, Cambridge, MA (2018); Oakville Galleries, Oakville, Canada (2018); Kunstverein Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany (2015). Notable group exhibitions include Cecilia Alemani’s The Milk of Dreams, La Biennale di Venezia, 59th International Exhibition, Venice, Italy (2022); Mixing It Up: Painting Today, Hayward Gallery, London, UK (2021); The Imaginary Sea, Fondation Carmignac, Porquerolles, France (2021); Slow Painting, curated by Hayward Touring, presented at Leeds Museum and Art Gallery, Leeds, UK; Levinsky Galley, Plymouth, UK (2020); Maskulinitäten, Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn, Germany (2019); and Paint, Also Known as Blood, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland (2019).

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Aspen, Allison Katz's contemporary painting in dialogue with fragments of Pompeii frescoes

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