Exhibitions
KATHERINE WOLKOFF: TAKEN FROM A CAT May 12 – June 18, 2022
Opening reception: Thursday, May 12, 6-8pm
Benrubi Gallery is pleased to announce Taken from a Cat, an exhibition which features two new series of photographs by Katherine Wolkoff. In her second exhibition with the gallery, Wolkoff observes migrating birds and contemplates humans’ interaction with the natural world and the looming threat of climate change. Taken by a Cat marks Benrubi Gallery’s inaugural exhibition in its new location, 529 West 20th Street. There will be an opening reception on Thursday, May 12th from 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm.
Katherine Wolkoff’s new photographs are inspired by the life and work of Elizabeth Dickens, a devoted birdwatcher, school teacher, and conservationist. Born in 1877, Dickens lived her entire life observing the natural environment of Block Island, Rhode Island, a small New England locale that is a key resting stop for migrating birds on the Atlantic Flyway. Wolkoff considers Dickens both collaborator and muse, modeling her work after the early female environmentalist to herald the importance of birds and land conservation. Katherine Wolkoff visualizes narratives around migrating birds, the specter of death and the continual danger of extinction. In an array of forty small scale photographs, the artist beautifully details handwritten labels that amateur ornithologist Elizabeth Dickens composed each time a dead bird was found by her or her neighbors. The one-hundred year old tags recall how each bird died, for instance “Taken from a Cat,” “Flew into the Lighthouse,” or “Killed by Telephone Wire.” Five new large-scale works, made during the fall and spring seasons, offer bird’s-eye perspective of seasonally migrating birds. Utilizing a lensless camera, Wolkoff presents views of the natural landscape that are simultaneously seductive and disorienting. The large landscapes place the bird tags geographically in Block Island’s natural environment, and allow fleeting glimpses of their habitat.
Katherine Wolkoff was born in 1976 in Indiana and received her MFA from Yale University, where was the winner of the Richard Dixon Welling Prize.
Wolkoff photographs range from the miniature landscapes of Deer Beds to Birds, a series of silhouettes of taxidermied birds amassed by naturalist and educator Elizabeth Dickens in the early 20th century. Much of her work turns around dichotomies of absence and presence, as in the deer whose sleep is invoked in matted grass on Block Island or the specter of life in the colorless yet dynamic outlines of stuffed birds. At times Wolkoff uses light and perspective to skew our traditional view of an object; other times she confronts a scene with forthright, often understated directness, allowing its unmediated presence to convey a strangeness that is by turns eerie and comforting.
Wolkoff’s work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally including the QPN Festival, France; Aperture Gallery, New York; and Palais de Tokyo, France. Her works are included in the collections of the Addison Gallery of Art, the Norton Museum of Art and the Yale University Library, and they have been featured in publications including the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, and Artforum. She was nominated for the Prix Pictet Prize in 2008.