A Solo Exhibition by Katherine Mitchell DiRico
February 11, 2022 – March 13, 2022
Opening Reception: Friday, February 11 from 6 to 8 pm
“…I went around recognizing myself in an idea that suggested general disintegration and, at the same time, new composition” – Elena Ferrante, The Story of the Lost Child (2015)
Praise Shadows Art Gallery is pleased to present the solo exhibition of Boston-based artist Katherine Mitchell DiRico, i’ll believe in anything for a while. The gallery will house a site-specific multi-media installation that brings together objects, photographs, sounds, video, and light collected and made by the artist during the last two years of the pandemic. Presented in varying degrees of completion, DiRico develops an aesthetic vocabulary that pulls from everyday family life, her studio practice, and our contemporary moment, to explore the edges of how we hold on to an idea. The result is a profound and multifaceted attempt to make sense of our emergence from the protracted isolation during this pandemic.
Pursuing a common thread in her work, DiRico presents an installation through which the viewer negotiates their shifting location in time and space. A record turns, playing at times the sound of a mother humming, and at other times, the sound of an automated voicemail, or a medical pump. A mirrored screen rotates, reflecting the image of a fluorescent post-apocalyptic landscape painting hung on the wall. At each turn, there seems to be another material or virtual lens through which to absorb this ever-evolving installation. Within this world where real and virtual, time and space, fact and fiction, keep re-negotiating their terms, we find ourselves confronting the constructed nature of our realities.
In quantum physics, the uncertainty principle states that it is in general not possible to predict the value of a quantity with arbitrary certainty, even if all initial conditions are specified. i’ll believe in anything for a while is situated within this concept. DiRico’s practice explores the point where our minds no longer hold on to reality. Searching for this liminal space of uncertainty, i’ll believe in anything for a while calls on us to be our most vulnerable, and therefore, our most tender. As viewers walk through the space, various materials – light, air, photographs, objects, video, reflections, sound – are activated and repeated, shifting continually. The intent is at once unnerving and comforting, calling on our visceral and perceptual impulses to stay vigilant in the looking process. Much like current relationships in the real and virtual worlds that we inhabit, and the continually shifting pandemic climate, we are faced with the ultimate question of how to wade through these fragments to find that which feels real, authentic, and true.
About the Artist
Katherine Mitchell DiRico uses drawing, sculpture, light, video and sound elements to create multimedia installations that investigate how we negotiate connectivity and sense perception in today’s networked world. Mitchell DiRico was awarded the Montague Travel Grant and the President’s Research Grant from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the 2018 Walter Feldman Fellowship from the Arts & Business Council of Greater Boston, juried by curator Jen Mergel. She holds a BA from Smith College and the University of Dakar, Senegal, and an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Tufts University. She has exhibited extensively throughout the United States and Europe.
IMAGE CAPTION: Katherine Mitchell DiRico, stilling life, (awhile) 2 of 3: triptych, 2021, ink on acrylic (photograph), 27”x10”