Culver, Los Angeles
Erin Kaczkowski
The Back Of Something Missing
Ms Barbers“It’s something that happens constantly. Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.” -René Magritte, 1977. From Harry Torczyner's Ideas and Images, in reference to his 1964 painting The Son of Man. In the exhibition The Back of Something Missing, Erin Kaczkowski's paintings layer translucent, reflective and photographic material to create surfaces that merge and congeal image to material, and image/surface to support. Stretching, peeling, pouring and casting layers create an effect which suggests the interruption of an image in its various stages of formation so that often an imprint, trace or cover remains. Themes of the work include family history and memory, as well as the broader question of photography's impact on memory and relationships in contemporary life. Erin Kaczkowski was born in Milwaukee, WI and studied fine arts and social work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2011 she earned an MFA in painting from Yale University. Awards include the Alice Kimball English Traveling Fellowship to the Atacama Desert and residency programs including the Anderson Ranch and the Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies. Her work was included in Wry & Dry at Ms Barbers in March 2016.