Canadian-born, London-based Allison Katz eschews any definitive artistic style, freely moving among painterly techniques and subject matter. Animals, images of women, and compositional fragmentation do reoccur – seen here in Showery – but their final rendering varies wildly from painting to painting. Katz’s approach raises a number of questions – What is the role of an artist’s style? Who does it serve? How is it useful to the viewer? – and challenges us to approach each work on individual, rather than stylistic, terms. Katz’s first solo museum exhibition in the UK, Artery, is currently on view at Nottingham Contemporary through October 2021, and will travel to Camden Art Centre in January 2022. Other solo exhibitions have been organized by the MIT List Center for the Arts, Cambridge; Oakville Galleries; and Kunstverein Freiburg. A comprehensive monograph on Katz’s work was published by JRP|Editions in 2020.
