Katherine
Lubar’s appeal as an artist is her remarkable ability to portray
everyday objects as striking images that stride out of colourful spaces.
Her first solo show at Signatures Gallery LTD in St James’s, London,
entitled ‘Broken Space’, demonstrates she has that unique
gift to create an image that will haunt the imagination of the viewer
and fascinate with its beauty and its honesty. The exhibition will run
from Monday 27th June until Saturday 23rd July, 2005.
This arresting
exhibition, containing her latest works of acrylic on panel paintings
and some of her earlier works, is full of everyday objects such as a
TV, windows and a lamppost. Her style could be described as a ‘minimalist
version of urban realism’. Yet her paintings are certainly not
of the ordinary, as she gives these everyday objects an importance and
elegance not often associated with their practical real life existence.
Her works radiate strong light with long shadows and wonderful colour.
Her ability
has attracted the acclaim of respected curators such as Dorothy Masterson,
Director of the MADI Museum in Dallas, who likens her work to that of
the well known American minimalist artist Ellsworth Kelly. "Katherine
Lubar's work has a depth that fascinates, while the canvas remains minimal
and flat. She has taken reality and reduced it to purist abstraction,
and she does it better than Ellsworth Kelly," enthuses Masterson.
Katherine
herself says, "All my work is based on what I see in the world
around me. Everyone sees the world differently, therefore there is no
such thing as an objective 'Real Space'. My work is my Real Space -
these are the aspects of everyday objects that jump out at me; their
line and shape and how light acts upon them. I take images from my visual
reality and distill them into geometric shapes, removing any unnecessary
detail to create a new kind of space, full of colour and geometry. This
I call a ‘Broken Space’; broken into geometrical patterns
consisting of light and shadow and positive and negative space. Use
of arbitrary colour and the abstraction of shapes decreases emphasis
on the 'object'. Hopefully after looking at my work, people will then
see those objects in a different way."
Originally
from the United States, Katherine Lubar has lived in London for the
past 12 years, gaining a postgraduate Diploma in Painting from the City
and Guilds of London Art School in 1999. Lubar has exhibited extensively
in the UK in both solo and group shows, including at The Royal College
of Art, The Mall Galleries, Red Cross Charity Auction with Eyestorm,
The Oxo Tower and The Camden Roundhouse. She is now showing on an international
level, exhibiting in a show at the MADI Museum in Dallas in 2004 and
in a touring show entitled ‘Celebration of Geometric Art' that
began in Naples in 2004, is currently at the MADI Museum in Dallas and
will continue on to venues in Florida and Paris.
Her work
is becoming widely appreciated and can be found in private and public
collections worldwide, including the UK Department of Education and
Employment, the MADI Museum in Dallas, and private collections in the
UK, US, France & Germany.
Katherine
Lubar - Broken Space: 27 June – 23 July 2005
Signatures Gallery LTD, 38 Duke Street, St James’s, London, SW1Y
6DF.
Opening Hours: Tues. – Fri. 10:30am to 5:30pm (Late Thurs. to
7pm). Sat. 11am to 4pm.
There will be a private evening viewing on 28th June.
