Carolyn Case

Asya Geisberg Gallery is pleased to present "Before It Sinks In", an exhibition of paintings and drawings by Carolyn Case. This will be the artist's third solo exhibition with the gallery. Through paint and pastel, Case articulates time as space: what came before sets a foundation for what comes after, and while the paintings offer a sense of resolve, the playful gaps between now and then suggest the possibility for infinite expansion. Where revision was once a process of retraction, Case now corrects through calculated and deliberate addition, forming an accumulation of marks that undulates as one brushstroke sinks beneath another. In doing so, the artist offers a reflective rehashing of the narratives the artist both creates and contends with in daily life - conditions like the confrontation between obligation and personal progression that cannot (or should not) be eradicated but can be reconfigured, reinterpreted, and remixed.

For Case, something as menial as washing dishes transcends the tangible act. It contains the conversations held around the meal consumed moments before, the sourcing of the ingredients that went into it, the unspoken dynamics between everyone at the table - all of which float to and recede from the surface. She honors every element of life's daily grind by maintaining the energy of each streak, scratch, and blur that meets her panel or paper. While "Homemade Tattoo", her previous exhibition at Asya Geisberg, drew from the buzz of activity at the kitchen table, "Before It Sinks In" makes an organic shift to the sink as a formal device. This site for dutiful routine becomes an opportunity for capturing motion, patching together fragments of space, and reveling in the tactility of her medium. Some compositions create a sense of looking down into a space that in turn pushes upward, as in Kitchen Sink, which evokes dishes piled above water; in others, like Build Battle Case suggests the possibility of a landscape receding as the surface, a film of stacked marks, remains fixed. Each mark is both a call and a response that collectively builds into a resounding chorus.

-- Maura Callahan