Kate Sterchi, Pair Programming (Installation view). Matteo Cantarella, 2023. Photo: Courtesy the artist & Matteo Cantarella.
Press release, October 2023
...you know how scientists can illuminate and watch neurons talking to each other?...watching memory get made...I wonder if light, traveling and reflecting, is doing something similar?
I mean, it must carry something of where it came from with it, and be making some sort of pathway ‘with’ all it passes through—oh wait, Rune, do you remember, it was a really long time ago now, I think I sent you a picture-of-a-powerpoint-from-that-cognitive-capitalism-residency...it was a slide with an image of a kitten’s brain making a new neural pathway...?
Kate Sterchi, Crush Void Scream, 2023 (watercolor on linen, steel frame, 17.0 x 12.0 x 5.0 cm). Photo: Courtesy the artist & Matteo Cantarella.
Kate Sterchi, Crush Void Scream, 2023 (watercolor on linen, steel frame, 17.0 x 12.0 x 5.0 cm). Photo: Courtesy the artist & Matteo Cantarella.
Kate Sterchi, Crush Void Scream, 2023 (watercolor on linen, steel frame, 17.0 x 12.0 x 5.0 cm). Photo: Courtesy the artist & Matteo Cantarella.
Kate Sterchi, Automagical thinking, 2023 (watercolor on linen, steel frame, 17.5 x 23.0 x 3.0 cm). Photo: Courtesy the artist & Matteo Cantarella.
Kate Sterchi, Automagical thinking, 2023 (watercolor on linen, steel frame, 17.5 x 23.0 x 3.0 cm). Photo: Courtesy the artist & Matteo Cantarella.
Kate Sterchi, Pair Programming, 2023 (watercolor on linen, steel frame, 36.0 x 23.0 x 3.0 cm). Photo: Courtesy the artist & Matteo Cantarella.
Kate Sterchi, Pair Programming, 2023 (watercolor on linen, steel frame, 36.0 x 23.0 x 3.0 cm). Photo: Courtesy the artist & Matteo Cantarella.
Many years ago now, I participated in this play practice that took place once a week over dinner. It had been going on for years prior to my joining. Anyways, that play, Love and Information, is made up of small vignettes, intimate scenes between two people, sometimes 3; each scene rarely lasts longer than a minute or two. So, at play practice, these short glimpses of interpersonal relations are enacted, one after the other and repeated while sharing a meal. We would sit around a table and read the scenes with new people each time and see what happened.
Kate Sterchi, Pair Programming (Installation view). Matteo Cantarella, 2023. Photo: Courtesy the artist & Matteo Cantarella.
Kate Sterchi, Soulmate Specialist, 2023 (risograph print, 30.0 x 42.0 cm). Photo: Courtesy the artist & Matteo Cantarella.
Kate Sterchi, Pair Programming (Installation view). Matteo Cantarella, 2023. Photo: Courtesy the artist & Matteo Cantarella.
Kate Sterchi, Soulmate Specialist, 2023 (risograph print, 30.0 x 42.0 cm). Photo: Courtesy the artist & Matteo Cantarella.
Kate Sterchi, Time Share, 2023 (watercolor on linen, steel frame, 12.0 x 12.0 x 5.0 cm). Photo: Courtesy the artist & Matteo Cantarella.
One night at play practice, I was talking with one of the other actors about poetry and painting. A new friend had just “introduced” me to Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge saying, “the painters know Richard Tuttle but the poets know Mei-Mei.” I am not sure they are of some-thing specific; in fact, I am fairly certain they are paintings of ambiguity. But I’m not sure they are actually paintings anymore.
Kate Sterchi, After Slips 3-4-5, 2023 (stoneware, about the size of a banana peel). Photo: Courtesy the artist & Matteo Cantarella.
Star (1)
It takes the light two point eight million years to get here.
So we’re looking at two point eight million years ago.
It might not be there. It could have died by now.
So who’s going to see that?
It might not even be people by then. The sun’s only eight minutes.
In the morning let’s wait eight minutes and see if it’s there now.
(1) Churchill, Caryl. “Star” from Love and information. 2012.
Exhibition period: October 13 - November 18, 2023.
More info: www.matteocantarella.net