BGuthrie Photos: DC -- American University -- Katzen Arts Center -- 2022B Summer Exhibit: Mokha Laget: Perceptualism

DC -- American University -- Katzen Arts Center -- 2022B Summer Exhibit: Mokha Laget: Perceptualism:

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Description of Pictures: Mokha Laget: Perceptualism
Curated by Kristen Hileman
June 11–August 7, 2022

Featuring over 40 paintings, sculpture, drawings, and lithographs, Mokha Laget: Perceptualism surveys the last ten years of an artistic practice devoted to exploring perception and space. Through a playful and illusionistic use of color and implied dimensionality, Laget’s work references her multicultural influences, particularly the unique landscape and architecture of the places where she has lived, ranging from Northern Africa through Washington, DC to her current home in Santa Fe. The stunning shaped canvases for which Laget is best known celebrate abstraction’s capacity to respond to the complexities and ambiguities of contemporary life; the work’s visual hybridity manifests as “gentle” optical chaos. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue that considers Laget’s work as well as her contributions to the Washington, DC art community of the 1980s and ‘90s. The publication includes a dialogue between Laget and Lucy Lippard, and essays by David Pagel and exhibition curator Kristen Hileman.

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[1] KATPER_220611_04.JPG	[2] KATPER_220611_12.JPG	[3] KATPER_220611_20.JPG
[4] KATPER_220611_24.JPG	[5] KATPER_220611_26.JPG	[6] KATPER_220611_34.JPG
[7] KATPER_220611_35.JPG	[8] KATPER_220611_37.JPG	[9] KATPER_220611_40.JPG
[10] KATPER_220611_43.JPG	[11] KATPER_220611_45.JPG	[12] KATPER_220611_52.JPG
[13] KATPER_220611_55.JPG	[14] KATPER_220611_59.JPG	[15] KATPER_220611_62.JPG
[16] KATPER_220611_65.JPG	[17] KATPER_220611_68.JPG	[18] KATPER_220611_73.JPG
[19] KATPER_220611_76.JPG	[20] KATPER_220611_78.JPG

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. KATPER_220611_04.JPG: Noodle, 2021
2. KATPER_220611_12.JPG: Rokkaku #2, 2021
3. KATPER_220611_24.JPG: KITES: NOODLE, ROKKAKU #2 AND ROKKAKU #4 Laget consulted with a kite maker versed in traditional techniques to produce Noodle, Rokkaku #2, and Rokkaku #4 in 2021. (Rokkaku is a Japanese term for a kite with six corners.) Fully functioning kites, the pieces are printed with photographs that Laget took of the interplay of light and shadow in the atrium of the American University Museum during the initial stages of planning this show. As light interacts with the translucent surfaces of the finished kites now on display at AU, the present and past come together in a dynamic, ethereal experience of architecture as abstract form.
4. KATPER_220611_35.JPG: Mokha Laget: Perceptualism Curated by Kristen Hileman
5. KATPER_220611_37.JPG: MOKHA LAGET: PERCEPTUALISM Featuring paintings, sculpture, drawings, and lithographs, Mokha Laget: Perceptualism surveys the last ten years of an artistic practice devoted to exploring perception and space. Through a playful and illusionistic use of color and implied dimensionality, Laget's work references her multicultural influences. These include the unique landscape and architecture of the places where she has lived, ranging from Northern Africa through Washington, DC to her current home in Santa Fe, as well as an international array of approaches to abstraction. Laget has always had an extraordinary aptitude for mixing color, which was further developed while she pursued her BFA at the Corcoran School of Art in the 1980s and then assisted Gene Davis, a Corcoran professor and celebrated Washington Color School artist, in his studio. She has also been impacted by Latin American art, citing the sensual, intuitive, and emotional engagement with abstraction undertaken by mid-20th century Brazilian artists Lygia Clark and Lygia Pape as especially meaningful. Laget herself is recognized as an important figure in MADI art, a loose international affiliation of artists dedicated to innovation in abstraction that was founded in 1940s Buenos Aires around the principles of "movement, abstraction, dimension, and invention." Ultimately, Laget's art, particularly the stunning, individually shaped canvases for which she is best known, celebrates abstraction's metaphorical capacity to represent and respond to contemporary life's complexities and ambiguities through the dynamic interaction of color, shape, and spatial illusion.
6. KATPER_220611_45.JPG: Watershed #2 (Remains of the Day), 2022
7. KATPER_220611_52.JPG: WATERSHED #2 At 28-feet wide, Watershed #2 is a monumental example of the ways in which Laget explores spatial illusion in abstract painting. The juxtaposition of colors-some warm, others cool; some bright, others subdued-cues the perception of spatial relationships with forms either appearing to project or recede from the wall. However, this visual logic does not always match that conveyed by the manner in which Laget's shapes overlap. Some planes interrupt the edges of others to claim a top position or are swallowed by adjacent volumes in ways that might contradict rather than reinforce the spatial reading of color. Watershed #2's large scale heightens the feeling of contending with the work as a meditation on impossible architecture. As our eyes look to find order within the composition, we might imagine our bodies seeking a stable place to sit or stand only to find a playful sequence of sliding, shifting shapes. Laget equates this approach of adopting a playful, fluid perspective in the face of ambiguity and instability with positive strategies for dealing with the complexity of contemporary life.
8. KATPER_220611_55.JPG: Double Pylon, 2021
9. KATPER_220611_59.JPG: DOUBLE PYLON Appearing almost like an abstract version of a waterfall, Double Pylon experiments with pushing painting off the wall and into the arena of sculpture. Laget often makes unusually shaped paintings and playfully explores the illusion of dimensional space on their flat surfaces. Here, however, she places parallelograms on the floor and tilts them to the wall, creating an experience in which artwork and architecture literally come together in three dimensions. This hybrid work offers viewers another way of contemplating the physical, emotional, and metaphorical understandings we derive from form and space. For instance, we might ask ourselves does Double Pylon feel more or less stable than the paintings on the surrounding walls or the nearby bronze sculptures? Does the placement of the work make it seem more like a shelter or a barrier? And, do we relate to Double Pylon more through our visual or tactile senses?
10. KATPER_220611_73.JPG: Forefront, 2018
11. KATPER_220611_78.JPG: Construction #2, 2020
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