Kate Levant: …Which’s Ploying the Fans

As in her practice, much of the work is manipulated on site, leaving the end result ambiguous while in Levant’s hands. The charged relationship she has with her materials is evident in the many stains and folds, the struggle to control their physical properties a metaphor for the artist’s growing concerns about climate change. The subsequent imagery evokes the wreckage left behind by a hurricane or flood, and the push and pull struggle between Mother Nature and man.

Kate Levant (b. 1983 in Chicago, lives in New York) received her BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston in 2006, and her MFA from Yale University School of Art in 2010. She held a two-year residency position at the Rijkskademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam in 2012 & 2013 and most recently was a 2016 artist-in-residence at Lighthouse Works on Fishers Island, NY. Levant’s solo exhibitions include, Collicaligreggi Gallery, Catania, Italy (2015); Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2015); Galerie Max Mayer, Dusseldorf, Germany (2014); Zach Feuer Gallery, New York, NY (2014), and her first solo show with moniquemeloche in 2013. She was included in the 2012 Whitney Biennial, and in 2010, the Los Angeles-based Nomadic Division commissioned her site-specific performance work on Flagler Memorial Island, Miami Beach. Levant’s work has been reviewed in the New York Times, Art Forum, Art in America, Art Review, the New Yorker, New York Magazine, Mousse Magazine, Nero, Art Ltd., Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Chicago New City, Detroit Metro Times. Levant was awarded the Fondazione Ettore Fico Prize at Artissima 2015 in Torino, Italy. This fall she’ll exhibit concurrent solo shows at moniquemeloche in Chicago and Susanne Hilberry in Detroit, followed by a presentation of works alongside Sanford Biggers and Nate Young for moniquemeloche at Artissima 2016, curated by Rossella Farinotti.