Satellite Events

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Catherine Gontarek

She/ Her

Bio

Catherine Gontarek is a graphic designer and visual artist living in Philadelphia. She uses design, photography, collage, and paint to explore the occupation of space, place, and body relative to a location, and what a reciprocal relationship with the environment might look like.

Gontarek has shown her artwork locally in solo and group shows since 1994 and is a member of InLiquid and Philadelphia CollageWorks. She holds a BFA from Central Michigan University, and an MLA from the University of Pennsylvania.

Statement

“I've lately focused on making small series of collages that allow me to synthesize elements of design and photography, and to work simultaneously across themes of objects/structure, location/place, womanhood/nature. As I reinterpret or relocate objects or bodies, I look for the resulting signifiers and power dynamics in the composition that might reveal multiple relationships to an environment.

I collage in both analog and digital forms and have discovered that notions of chance and the unexpected can be found in both modes, as well as opportunities to forge a personal visual vocabulary, or establish constraints.”

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Richard King 

He/ Him

Bio

Based in Philadelphia, Richard’s art practice is focused on abstract drawing, painting and sculpture exploring nature of form, space, language. Educated as an architect, he holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Temple University and a Master of Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. Richard is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Architecture at Drexel University’s Westphal College of Media Arts & Design.

Statement

“My recent work has evolved from my interest in the fluid nature of thought, form and language, in pursuit of resonance and meaning.  Merging my interests in design, drawing and sculpture I am inspired by a wide variety of memories, objects and forms.

The pieces are often considered in series; sharing rules of geometry, proportion and scale that allow them to speak to each other and be developed and considered collectively. Through this intuitive process, the pieces conflate formal, spatial, and figural qualities and tap into our collective memory of surrounding physical and typographical structures.

In creating amalgams of my own experience, I construct images that somehow feel familiar yet foreign, simple yet complex, and arrive at a clarity of form that is open to many ways of seeing and understanding.

This collection of works offers a space of conversation, thought and reflection and sheds light on the iterative process of making; a process through which we value art not just as something to be understood, but as catalyst for expanded thinking and re-invention.”