November 3, 2008

PRESS RELEASE

Iao: Acme Burger Company

275 SOUTH 200 WEST

SALT LAKE CITY UT 84101

T. 801.257.5700

http://www.acmeburgercompany.com

http://www.iao-gallery.com/index4.html

Heavy Metal
Cat Palmer
November 1, 2008 - November 30, 2008

Iao: Acme Burger Company is proud to present Iao: ABC’s inaugural exhibition at Iao PROJECTS’ expansion from its successful tiny conceptual gallery into a large-scale stylish dining venue. Founded in November 2008, this innovative partnership between owner Alan Ireland and gallery director Albert Wang represents a venture for the arts community in downtown Salt Lake City. Iao: ABC will showcase challenging and thoughtful art in both solo and group shows on an international scale, modeled after contemporary art museums in other major cities such as New York and L.A. The curators’ programs will balance the predominant academic and realist figurative art which infuses the regional culture of the Southwest.

Cat Palmer, who is an innovative commercial photographer from northern Utah, shows her provocative series “Heavy Metal” which looks at our everyday world with a sense of wonder and occasional bemusement. Combining her visual leitmotifs of young women and children, Palmer critiques in a gentle way the average viewer’s inability to explore the imagination in a technologically obsessed world where thoughts are dictated often by the media and clichéd imagery of advertising. Some of the works include pithy sayings similar to those of Barbara Kruger concerning the status of women caught within a whirlwind culture that expects them to be perfectionist but never human.

In her work, photographs from her commercial archives are transferred using archival methods onto scrap metal shelves colored lime green. With the industrial feel of the rather weighty and forceful metal contrasting with the rather personalized imagery of a dream universe reminiscent of that of Francesca Woodman, the surreal juxtaposition of paper and sculpture charms us with an uneasy understanding that our humanity could be drowned out by the consistent self-obsession that infuses our materialistic culture.

The photographic motifs range from her fellow artist friends such as Holly Mae Pendergast to innocent children and models who behave as stand-ins for the artist’s identity. In one of her sculptures, Palmer suggests a gothic plot involving a cropped-off housewife at an ironing board while beheaded dolls’ heads are piled up into a bucket. The viewer is forced to ask more questions such as: Who is this lady? Why the morbid twist on domestic life? Palmer’s art seamlessly combines a strong command of breakthrough techniques of photographic transfer with a subdued feminist subtext that pervades her fascinating world where female artists and domestic magicians and adventurous kids can brave a world which attacks us with consistent indifference and not-so-placid madness.

Cat Palmer is a freelance photographer from Washington Terrace, Utah. Raised in California, she combines her digital photographs with industrial metal pieces that cover the gamut of childhood memories to anti-war commentaries of her recent political pieces. She has won both the 2007 and 2008 Artys Readers’ Choice Award of best photographer from the Salt Lake City Weekly and was a featured artist at the Utah Arts Festival. Palmer has exhibited in various places ranging from Ken Sanders Rare Books, Kayo Gallery, The Women’s Art Center, Slowtrain, the Unknown Gallery, Poor Yorick, Art Access/VSA Arts of Utah, gallery uaf, and the University of Utah’s Bailey Exhibition Hall. She is represented currently by Iao PROJECTS.

In conjunction with the solo show, Iao: ABC is featuring a long-term untitled group exhibition that includes selected artists such as Jo Tuck, Rafal Karcz, Jeff Faerber, Barry Wolfryd, Mason Fetzer, qi peng, Circlegal, and Emilia Dubicki. This show will portray a wide range of media from figurative outsider art to graffiti-style stencils on layered Plexiglass to mixed-media watercolors on paper. The revolving group show will showcase international artists who are represented by Iao PROJECTS or Iao: ABC. Covering artists from California to Mexico to Poland to New York, the group shows at Iao: ABC will become similar to the programming at contemporary museums at other venues. This large-scale ambitious conceptual project will allow the viewer to understand the context of Utah artists within the larger scope of the international visual art scene and vice versa. The curators hope to engage the Salt Lake arts community with some of the most cutting-edge contemporary artwork that includes a diverse set of voices worldwide.

For more information about inventory or purchasing artwork at Iao: Acme Burger Company, please contact Alan Ireland or the gallery at (801) 257-5700 or abc@acmeburgercompany.com. For more background information about the artist or Iao PROJECTS, please contact Albert Wang at (801) 879-1971 or albert@iao-gallery.com.