Allison Katz, Autumn 2013, oil on leather
As a teenage diary writer, I could never shake the sensation that I was fraudulently presenting myself. I seemed unable to resist making subtle (and not so subtle) alterations to the fabric of my story, so that everyday events appeared more exciting, and I more accomplished, than either really were. An afternoon fraught with the blue ache of unrequited affection became a cool time hanging out with friends, as if the paper itself offered up the possibility of a second skin. I came across a number of my old diaries while clearing out my old bedroom at my parents’ house a few years ago, tucked away among an assortment of teenage detritus that I have no memory of acquiring, but which had somehow stuck around for years. An ancient can of beer, smutty postcards that were never sent, dust-covered stocking fillers. I opened one of these volumes, a scuffed silver hardback covered in skateboard stickers (the costume of a life which I never convincingly wore; my skateboarding career peaked at watching my brother practice on the corner of our street). Flicking through its pages I found that I had systematically crossed out every page in red ink, and scrawled “liar” in the margins. These annotations read like a terrible, embarrassing confession. That even in this most private of forums I could not, or did not know how to, tell the truth.
I met Allison Katz for the first time in her London studio in January, 2014. At the time of my visit she was a month away from an exhibition at Piper Keys, in which she was showing a series of portraits collectively titled “Adele,” after their sitter. Katz told me that she had known Adele for a long time, and had begun painting her when they both lived in New York. A number of the portraits were tacked up on her studio walls, each painted in oils on leather hides. Adele appeared on the leather in a variety of guises: in some as a barely there monochrome, more apparition than body; elsewhere sonorous, fully formed features stared out accusingly, as if I had interrupted some modern luminary in a moment of intense privacy.
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