NINA KATCHADOURIAN
KANSAS CUT-UP
September 19- November 8
Southwest Regional Library, 9725 Dixie Highway
As part of KMAC in the Community and the 2015 Louisville Photo Biennial
PUBLIC RECEPTION AND ARTIST TALK, OCTOBER 1 FROM 5:30-7:30PM
In conjunction with the Louisville Photo Biennial, KMAC presents Nina Katchadourian's ongoing Sorted Books project, a special exhibition for the new Southwest Regional branch of the Louisville Free Public Library. JRA of Louisville and MS&R of Minneapolis designed the 40,000 square foot award winning library building that directly serves the Shively, Pleasure Ridge Park and Valley Station areas.
The show features Kansas Cut-Up, one of Katchadourian's most recent sorting projects. The Sorted Books series began a little over 20 years ago while she was pursuing her MFA at the University of California, San Diego. It was during this time that she began to hone her skills at creating art that focuses on the everyday, positioning her studio practice in common spaces like libraries and commercial airplanes or around actions like speaking or a spider spinning a web. Her practice is centered on the close observation of the finer details of everyday objects and daily activity.
The series Kansas Cut-Up contains photos of book clusters from Katchadourian's weeklong visit in Lawrence, Kansas going through the personal library of the American writer William S. Burroughs. The title for the series references the cutup
technique that Burroughs would use to compose some of his most famous texts.
For her various Sorted Books projects Katchadorian culls books from a vast range of subjects and juxtaposes them sequentially so that their spines create a short story, visual poem, or proverbial statement, which not only reveals the crosssections of subjects contained in a specific collection but also Katchadourian's personality and own unique sense of humor. The clusters created by the artist behave not just as portraits of the library from which the books originate, but also as a portrait of the library's owner.
Throughout the exhibition, there will be public and educational programming available. Check back for schedules and more information.