Katie Bell and Rachel Mica Weiss at Super Dutchess

Artists: Katie Bell and Rachel Mica Weiss

Exhibition title: Objects of Desire

Venue: Super Dutchess, New York, US

Date: September 11 – October 11, 2020

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Super Dutchess, New York

Super Dutchess is pleased to present a two-person exhibition by New York based artists Katie Bell and Rachel Mica Weiss. The exhibition brings together two kinds of work that navigate a process of exchange and space existing in a physical world. Investigating object-ness and space, the works redefine existing moments of desire between forms and their relationship to each other. They extend into one another leaving traces of architecture behind while propping up the possibility of an implied body. Echoing displayed forms, Objects of Desire is shown in a window gallery where viewers will lean in, lean forward and bend down to view Bell and Weiss’ object dialogue.

In preparation for that dialogue, Bell and Weiss engaged in an image only conversation one month before the show. The parameters for the project were that they had to use their mobile phone to text their images and only send each other an image in response to the last one sent – it could be any photo of their choosing. Space and image in this context helped define and re-occupy their in-person space for their exhibited sculpture.

Bell started the conversation and when a total of twelve images were sent, writer Evan Miller wrote a poem in response to that exchange.

Objects of Desire is on view September 11th through October 11th.

Katie Bell (b. 1985) is an artist originally from Rockford, Illinois. She received her BA from Knox College (Galesburg, IL) in 2008 where she studied fine art and race and gender studies. She graduated in 2011 from the Rhode Island School of Design (Providence, RI) with an MFA in Painting. Bell has shown her work at a variety of venues, Smack Mellon (Brooklyn, NY), Locust Projects (Miami, FL), Okay Mountain Gallery (Austin), and the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (Lincoln, MA). Her work has been written about in BOMB Magazine, Whitewall, Hyperallergic, Artnet, The Chicago Tribune, and Paper Magazine. In 2011 she was an artist in residence at the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation’s Space Program based in Brooklyn, NY. She was awarded a fellowship in painting by the New York Foundation for the Arts and in 2016 the Saint-Gaudens Memorial Fellowship. Bell lives and works in New York, NY.

Rachel Mica Weiss (b. Rockville, MD, 1986) is a sculptor and installation artist based in Brooklyn and Pittsburgh. Her work reconstitutes various boundaries–architectural, topographical, and psychological–to demonstrate their impact upon us. Weiss earned a BA in psychology from Oberlin College, an MFA in sculpture from the San Francisco Art Institute, and is a 2011 recipient of the San Francisco Foundation Murphy and Cadogan Fellowship. Weiss has been the subject of seven solo exhibitions at the following venues: Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA; Lux Art Institute, San Diego, CA; LMAK Gallery and Fridman Gallery, New York, NY; Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, MA; and the San Francisco Arts Commission, San Francisco, CA.Weiss has also created public artworks for venues worldwide, including permanent, site-specific installations for: the US Embassy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan; Airbnb, Seattle, WA; Brookfield’s One Allen Center in Houston, TX; 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge, NY; The Ashland in Brooklyn, NY; and Media Math’s 4 World Trade Center office, among others. She recently completed an installation for The Pittsburgh International Airport and is working in collaboration with the Gates Foundation on her largest installation to date for the University of Washington’s Public Health Initiative.