Slow Down Soft Body, Stay With Me

2023
 

‘Subsuming Solids’ sculptures, paper pulp, adhesive, paint, ‘Supermass’ (2021) a video hanging and playing on a loop, stretched fabric back projected with LED lights, motorized track, vacuum formed PETG plastic relief prints of sculptures, ‘Spindling Solid’ sculptures (2023), paper pulp, adhesive, acrylic paint, LED lights, tripods, shadows, Earthworm aroma, sand, ylang ylang, and musk, layered video projection on alternating loops- ‘Soft Bodies’, ‘WormHole’ and ‘Rain’, steel rod, fabric, ceramics, epoxy clay, inkway clay, cable rope, the sound of a guided meditation leading through the body, and a spoken list of common, and uncommon, natural, and synthetic notes used in perfume.

 

In a haptic relationship, our self rushes up to the surface to interact with another surface. When this happens, there is a concomitant loss of depth - we become amoebalike, lacking a center, changing as the surface to which we cling changes. We cannot help but be changed in the process of interaction.

             Laura Marks, Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media. 2000

 

As the viewer enters the space, they are touched by the light of the projection and find themselves placed in a material landscape. The scent of ylang ylang, musk and Earthworm - Demeter® hangs in the air, as whispered ASMR-inspired sounds and material video projections move in and out of abstraction. A spherical video of twisting earthworms is projected on the floor. Video of the underbelly of snails slowly moving across the surface of glass is projected on a scrolled screen. The snails touch with a delicate and intimate mucin exchange. This piece invites the viewer to think with their skin.
 

On the adjacent wall hung between an architectural cut-out is a stretch fabric screen offset from panels of PETG plastic vacuum formed relief prints created from biological sculptures created by the artist. Pinhole lights on moving tracts scan the surface casting shadows, drawing images reminiscent of amoebalike microscopy. 

 

A soft voice lists olfactory materials used in fragrance design. The words shift from natural materials we commonly associate with comfort, romance and beauty, to animalistic, synthetic, putrid and the unexpected.

 

Sculptures made from layers of pigmented and sanded paper pulp are placed throughout the space. Some sculptures are intended to absorb light while others project it and cast shadows throughout the space. 

 

The title ‘Slow Down Soft Body, Stay With Me,’ references the viewer as a soft body, gastropods, amoebas around us, and microbes within us. Thus diminishing a hierarchy and calling for care that extends beyond human-centric view.  Yet as slime and mucin are evasive materials, thus hard to pin, hard to define, as this work shifts from seductive to slightly abject, layered in notes of abstraction, it too becomes liquid crystal.

Through the use of immersive installations, Hubbell’s work orchestrates experiences of empathy and connectivity through reciprocal physicality. Her work is centered on the exploration of visceral materials in relation to the body and invites the viewer to become keenly aware of their own body through these haptic experiences. 

Sculptures: 

Subsuming Solids

2023
Adhesive, acrylic paint, paperpulp, armature, and mica powder. 

 

Katie Hubbell's Subsuming Solids are meticulously crafted from layer upon layer of carefully sanded paper pulp. The iridescence of the work comes alive as pigment embedded within the pulp renders a transparent depth and glow.
 

Intrigued by the way light interacts with paper pulp, Hubbell creates work that is both bodily and ethereal. The sculptures draw inspiration from the soft, intricate forms within our bodies – referencing the fragile bones in our ears as well as other abstract organisms.

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Photo credit: Flaneurshan.studio