British artist Katy Moran continually interrogates and energizes techniques, ideas, and motifs from the entire history of painting. Moving back and forth between abstraction and figuration – and most often inhabiting the fertile ground between the two – her works often combine lush, loosely expressive passages with tightly composed brushwork, seen here in Lilt, where repeated geometric lines of different sizes create a sense of depth reminiscent of a historical city scene. Her use of a found frame further complicates the reading of a work that is engaged with, but also breaks from, history painting. Color leaks out onto the found frame in an act that pushes the work into the territory of found object, and perhaps sculpture. Moran’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Parasol Unit for Contemporary Art, London; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus; Tate St Ives; and Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, among others. Her work has been included in recent exhibitions such as Painter, Walker Art Gallery, Minneapolis; Contemporary Painting, 1960 to the Present: Selections from the SFMOMA Collection, SFMOMA; and Art Now: Strange Solution, Tate Britain.
