Catherine Haggarty
Afterlife
October 18 - November 23, 2024

Deanna Evans Projects is pleased to present Afterlife, an exhibition of new works by Catherine Haggarty. This is her first solo exhibition with the gallery and will be on view from October 18 - November 23, 2024.

This new body of work has emerged through Haggarty’s contemplation of what it means to consider her work as a visual recording; a living artifact of histories past and present. Humans have always created various frameworks for understanding these existential questions about where we go, both physically and spiritually after we have passed on. Haggarty sees the new work as a sort of present tense ‘afterlife’ where the marks, recordings and symbols of those past on can be seen and celebrated now. 

A departure point for her new work centers around folding paper - an activity she used to do teaching kids. Through these folds, Haggarty is able to impose new forms on top or through the work, encouraging the viewer to think about obstructing views and ways of seeing. The structural element of a fold can be seen everywhere; in clothing, window displays, waves, and many other places all around us. They both conceal and reveal information for the viewer to contemplate while looking.

Digging deeper into the works, there are small icons, gems or squares appearing in most of the work which was birthed from a gem used in her late Father’s carpentry. Through layers of digestion, process and re-ordering - the gems now act as a framing device for a picture within a picture. They can be a container for older and newer ideas as well as a vessel to sneak in personal symbolic meaning into and occasionally they remain as they were first seen by Haggarty - a shiny bright gem reflecting color and light. Each piece acts as an artifact; holding images, lines, and patterns from the objects and people she loves and has lost.

In 2017, Haggarty’s Father was diagnosed with Benson’s Syndrome - an incurable neurological disease that would eventually take his life in 2022. Her dad, a forever articulate, sensitive and creative person could still write words and numbers - albeit wobbly and shaky. Over the years, Haggarty saw his formerly precise language falter and disappear. Those shakey drawings and lines are now woven through her work as a nod to language, grief, and the effort to communicate no matter the condition. Line is a forever tool to communicate. Here in this new work, the lines are speaking to the past as a memorial for those lost, but also acting as a present tense gesture - cementing their memory and marks in the now.

The enduring part of art is that it connects time, place and the living to those that have passed on. It helps us make sense of the ineffable experience of loss; it allows stories to endure and it reminds us to look deeper into the borrowed time we all are gifted.

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Catherine Haggarty earned her M.F.A from Mason Gross, Rutgers University in 2011. Her paintings and curatorial work have been reviewed by and featured in Bomb Magazine, Artnet, Hyperallergic, Art Forum, Two Coats of Paint, Brooklyn Magazine, The New York Times, Art Maaze Magazine, Art Spiel, Pep Talks for Artists, Sound and Vision Podcast and The Observer. Solo & Two Person exhibitions include: Untitled Miami, Lorin Gallery, LA, Geary Contemporary (NYC), Massey Klein Gallery (NYC), This Friday Next Friday (Brooklyn), Bloomsburg University (PA), and Look and Listen in Marseille France. Select group exhibitions include: The PIT (LA), Badr El Jundi (Madrid, Spain), Mindy Solomon (Miami, FL), Andrew Rafcaz (Chicago, IL), Hesse Flatow (NYC), Mrs (Maspeth, NY) and McBride Contemporary in Montreal, Canada.

Press:
Two Coats of Paint