Stage Cock (2020), by Allison Katz (Photo: Allison Katz/Luhring Augustine, New York)
Allison Katz’s paintings are disconcerting – discomforting, even. As in mystical medieval art, the real and the fantastical, the mythic and the everyday, are all bundled together with symbolic references that we struggle to get a handle on. Why is that naked man crawling in a field of oxen? What about the purple monkeys clambering around an image of a saint’s hand holding a flaming heart?
Creepy ambiguity is Katz’s stock-in-trade: in the world of her crisply graphic paintings, everything appears to be connected yet just beyond understanding. This concise survey of recent work by the rising Montreal-born, London-based painter disorientates from the outset.
Turn left as you enter and you meet a full-sized painting of a lift, doors open, apparently ready to take you downstairs and out of the gallery. Turn around, and a painted rooster races across the gap between one wall and another. Its title – The Other Side (2021) – sets the chicken up as a punchline. These are cartoon jokes, made odder because these are definitely not cartoon paintings: they are big works, and feel careful.
Katz has a brilliant poker face. Throughout this show, you are never sure who or what is being played. Is Posterchild (2021) – a painted page of a pretend family photo album – heartfelt, or a visual joke? The odd likelihood is that she is both playful and sincere simultaneously. This is a personal show, full of references to herself and her family: it’s also full of trickery and gymnastics.
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