Art often begins with the desire to make something visible that otherwise would remain wholly or partly invisible — wondrous details, complex structures and aspects of reality that are beyond the reach of our natural perception.
Curator: Valentijn Byvanck
The latter is also an important starting point for Katja Mater. While she tries to capture the poetry of the moment, she unveils the beauty of basic laws of physics.
What We See And What We Know is the first retrospective of work by visual artist Katja Mater. She examines ways to capture possible realities. She blends and splits colours, explores the laws of perspective and space, and shows how one medium passes into the other. Mater layers, compresses, stretches and rotates images in time. This way she plays with our expectation that photography captures reality in one single moment. Maters images exist parallel tot this reality and invite us to redefine the relationship between what we see and what we know. In addition to four new works that Mater produced for the exhibition, a broad selection from her oeuvre was presented.
What We See And What We Know marks the beginning of the new exhibition programme of Marres under Valentijn Byvanck, who was appointed as the new director of Marres in March 2013.
Artist
Katja Mater (1979) graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam in 2003 en completed her studies at De Ateliers in the same city. She was artist in residence at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture and The Mac Dowell Colony, both in the United States, and Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. Her work was shown in, among others, Galerie Martin van Zomeren (2013), Fotogalleriet, Oslo (2012), De Vleeshal, Middelburg (2012), Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York (2012) and, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Genève (2011).
Exhibition Overview
PublicationMultiple Densities
The publication Multiple Densities is the result of a long collaboration between the artist and graphic designer Veronica Ditting. The book presents beautiful, mostly new, image material and an introduction by curator and critic Maxine Kopsa.
On November 13 2013 the launch of this unique artist book was celebrated during an intimate evening at Marres. On this occasion, Katja Mater gave an introduction to the book and a guided tour of the exhibition What We See And What We Know. Afterwards, visitors were invited to join the artist for a diner at Marres Kitchen.
Press about Katja Mater
Press
For press requests, imagery and interview requests, please contact Julie Cordewener: julie.cordewener@marres.org.