Artist: Catherine Biocca
Exhibition title: Infinity Pool
Curated by: Christina Gigliotti
Venue: Polansky Gallery, Prague, The Czech Republic
Date: January 17 – February 22, 2019
Photography: Jan Kolsky / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Polansky Gallery, Prague
There is something remarkably soothing about staring into a fish bowl or an aquarium. While passively gazing upon the contained aqueous life forms bobbing back and forth, the depths and mysteries of the sea are smoothly domesticated and shrunken down to the size of a TV screen. The certain calm perhaps emanates from the unquestioned, unchallenged roles of viewer and object, the feeling of one’s ability to see everything, and engage or disengage at will.
For the exhibition Infinity Pool, Catherine Biocca has created an immersive and ever-expanding environment that challenges our depth perception as well as the seemingly unshakeable relationship between the object and the viewer. Through sculptural installation, painting, and video animations, Infinity Pool presents various dimensional layers of which the exhibition viewer becomes an immediate and involuntary part of. Seemingly inanimate at first glance, Biocca’s anthropomorphized aquatic characters converse and judge their surroundings, reveal their anxieties and desires, and make plans for later. Sculptural references to historical triumphs are worn down and repurposed, at best hanging on to their decorative qualities. With omniscience stripped and communication lines opened, Infinity Pool invites the viewer to jump head first into the fishbowl.
Catherine Biocca (b. 1984 in Rome, lives and works in Berlin) graduated from Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 2013 and received her postgraduate/residency program at Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam, during 2014-2015. Selected solo exhibitions include Ancient Workers at Kunstfort Vijfhuizen, NL (2018), Credit Card at VHDG, Leeuwarden, NL (2018), PREMIUM CLIENT at PSM Gallery in Berlin (2018), Bonsai Feeling at Kunstverein Nürnberg, DE (2017), and SS SAD SYMPHONY at Frutta in Rome (2017). Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Bank Space Gallery, London (2017), GAK Bremen, DE (2017), and the 3rd Animation Biennial Shenzhen (2016).
