Katie Herzog, Librariana@ CIRCUS GALLERY

Opening Reception Saturday, October 18, 7 – 9 pm

CIRCUS GALLERY
7065 Lexington Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90038

October 18 – November 22, 2008
Tues. – Thurs. 11 am – 5 pm
Fri. and Sat. 11 am – 6 pm

Librariana
"artifacts, including but by no means limited to printed materials, that depict any aspect of librarians, librarianship, and/or libraries… are most typically of an ephemeral nature, may be those produced or used by librarians or libraries as well as those produced and used by others; they include, in particular, representations of librarians, librarianship, and/or libraries in the popular culture of society."
-from A Guide to Collecting Librariana, by Norman D. Stevens

Librariana, Katie Herzog's debut solo exhibition at Circus Gallery, combines intense psychological narratives with material embodiments of information in entropic states of disorder. The result is an archive of emotion and a conceptual investigation of language, painting, and information science. Herzog's work celebrates both freedom of speech, by referring to cultural icons such as Richard Stallman and Lenny Bruce, and freedom from speech, by incorporating narratives that are told through a wild exploration of materials instead of through traditional linguistic means. Her aesthetic choices physically break open the normative way paintings communicate and offer a viewer a liberating sense of bewilderment and the unknown.

Color and information are literally meshed in her piece "Urinalysis," a psychedelic, rainbow patterned painting that disintegrates into cut strips at the bottom of the canvas, reminiscent of the strips used in which the test results can be read as color changes.

"Phonebooks" is an eight foot long depiction of sixty-six phonebooks on a library shelf, made entirely of colored yarn hand woven into metal lath. The weft thins at the base and the extra yarn is left hanging to the floor, creating a visual metaphor of information and its unraveling.

Herzog's work has been described as an "extra terrestrial inner landscape" and "Milton Avery in psychic distress." It is a message in a medium, and a generous window into a life.

Katie Herzog grew up in Silicon Valley and currently lives in Los Angeles and works as an Assistant Reference Librarian. She received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, her MFA from UC San Diego, and attended Library School at San Jose State University. She has been an artist in residence at Program Initiative for Art and Architectural Collaborations, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and the Banff Centre. Her work has recently been shown at Bucket Rider Gallery, the Los Angeles International Airport, the Whittier Public Library, and Angstrom Gallery.