TRANSFORMATIVE MACHINES
Catalog essay for Kim Van Someren’s solo exhibition, THE Slant of Line, at J. Rinehart Gallery, Seattle, August 2020
Throughout history, towers have symbolized the sacred, and the transformational. Observing how they appear in nature, from pillared gas nebulae to mountains, plateaus, and eroded ancient cores; we recreate these formations in our temples, homes, and skyscrapers. These towers house places of learning or healing; residence or commerce; and gathering. They are either busy, bustling clusters of activity or remote, solitary beacons. As ideas, towers represent strength, ascension, and proximity to the divine. Like all things, towers shift and alter form, illustrating moments of cataclysmic change and entropy. Reflecting on towers, and time, it's tempting to entertain an idea: the more thoughtful the form, the more opportunity for those within to bend and move, shift and grow. And in this way a human-made tower becomes less monumental and more humble; perhaps even a catalyst for something capable.
As we consider the significance as well as the humane potential of such dynamic architecture, we might consider the way vessels of change require a human to motivate them with inspiration and aspiration; the heart, and the breath. Right now, a number of metaphorical and literal structures and monuments are being dismantled, taken down, and removed. As we strive to rebuild something new, can our replacements reflect the empathy we wish for them to contain and embody, to receive and hold; to connect us more closely to each other?
For her solo exhibition, The Slant of Line, Seattle-based printmaker Kim Van Someren constructs a series of arcane objects with distinctive characteristics: jutting steeples and towers, tiered balconies and ladders; broad flat panels cast below. These figures are made of motion and mechanisms, of shifting and stillness, of contradictions of light and shadow; sheerness and opacity. Cantilevered limbs stretch out like wings. Tapering edges jut upwards towards the sky like blades. These are not just structures. These are transformative machines.
As we consider the significance as well as the humane potential of such dynamic architecture, we might consider the way vessels of change require a human to motivate them with inspiration and aspiration; the heart, and the breath. Right now, a number of metaphorical and literal structures and monuments are being dismantled, taken down, and removed. As we strive to rebuild something new, can our replacements reflect the empathy we wish for them to contain and embody, to receive and hold; to connect us more closely to each other?
For her solo exhibition, The Slant of Line, Seattle-based printmaker Kim Van Someren constructs a series of arcane objects with distinctive characteristics: jutting steeples and towers, tiered balconies and ladders; broad flat panels cast below. These figures are made of motion and mechanisms, of shifting and stillness, of contradictions of light and shadow; sheerness and opacity. Cantilevered limbs stretch out like wings. Tapering edges jut upwards towards the sky like blades. These are not just structures. These are transformative machines.
Kim Van Someren, Shuffler, 2020 carbon transfer, lithography, silk tissue, and collage on paper, 19 x 11 inches image courtesy of J. Rinehart Gallery and the artist
While the collage represented in her recent past works were airy, floating, and ethereal; the works in The Slant of Line present themselves as more solid, geometric, or angular. They are dynamically forward-facing with a low center of gravity— slanted, at the ready. Newly floating vessels with draping banners resurface; but now alongside them appear dark, grounded fortresses weighted by great, caliginous blocks. As my gaze slides across the velvety paper, I can easily imagine a fleet of these, driven by revelatory engines, rambling and motivating towards something unseen. Their constructions are a mystery; their hulls and roofs and appendages lack right angles or markers of affixation, held together by a solidity of line and shadow; fragments that may appear soft, convey strength and endurance. I consider the implied femininity behind this masculine presentation of form, how the presence and the space for evolution is effortlessly included in this view. That a dwelling may be more than a fixed, static sum of its purpose; and instead, it can be inextricably connected to the lives we wish to live and protect, moving dynamically towards our collective purpose.
My introduction to Van Someren’s work was through her series of forts and houses in 2010. These descriptors imply the presence of humans, who employ such spaces with the presence of community, and purposes of protection. But these forts, so devoid of windows and doors, contained more than their implications; more than keeping anything out, these darkened buildings were holding mysterious secrets closed tightly within. They would slump and lean, or teeter precariously on the most delicate scaffolding, ungrounded and dislocated from any place. Yet they were still, and solid, and present with immense gravity.
It’s to a similar idea of these initial, stationary structures that Van Someren returns for her show, The Slant of Line. Similar to the ambulatory figures from her most recent body of work, in which awkwardly rambling structures trundle across a landscape, The Slant of Line features motion with a planar shift and more grounded weight. These structures and mechanisms contain a greater feeling of a protective force, of sheltering, of dynamic forms to hold those within while weathering the terrain on which they cross, to withstand the outside uncertainties they face.
My introduction to Van Someren’s work was through her series of forts and houses in 2010. These descriptors imply the presence of humans, who employ such spaces with the presence of community, and purposes of protection. But these forts, so devoid of windows and doors, contained more than their implications; more than keeping anything out, these darkened buildings were holding mysterious secrets closed tightly within. They would slump and lean, or teeter precariously on the most delicate scaffolding, ungrounded and dislocated from any place. Yet they were still, and solid, and present with immense gravity.
It’s to a similar idea of these initial, stationary structures that Van Someren returns for her show, The Slant of Line. Similar to the ambulatory figures from her most recent body of work, in which awkwardly rambling structures trundle across a landscape, The Slant of Line features motion with a planar shift and more grounded weight. These structures and mechanisms contain a greater feeling of a protective force, of sheltering, of dynamic forms to hold those within while weathering the terrain on which they cross, to withstand the outside uncertainties they face.
Kim Van Someren, Wedder, 2020 carbon transfer on paper, 15 x 11 inches image courtesy of J. Rinehart Gallery and the artist
To describe Kim Van Someren’s work as architectural is a beginning, but not an end, to convey these tender resonant forms and their presence; let alone their reasoning. They're more deeply rooted in the journey of her constructive process, rather than a final conclusion. Van Someren revels in the act of making a mark or a series of marks; of exploring and conveying the sheer pleasure of texture and gravity and in doing so, passes the pleasure of her making to the pleasure of our looking. Shifts in tonality form rich gradients from white to cream to darker sand to grey to black. These subtle shifts of color and weight furnish both mass and movement to Van Someren's delicate layers and transparencies, simultaneously speaking to both presence and absence. We note what we see, by what we don’t see around it.
These layers are pulled from a reservoir of pre-printed source material on tissue paper, layered lines in carbon, or the soft grain of lithograph to compose new works of overlapping transparencies and the accumulation of marks and material. These cleverly arranged blocks and angles convince the eye to assist in the construction of these structures, or remark on the empty space around and between them. Forming gritty, rooted sentinels, this new population of shadowy charcoal and lithograph figures serve as a landed counterweight to the ethereality of the transparent layers of her collage. Hints of Futurist momentum appear in the way figures stand bold, darkened, in sharp contrast or relief, proceeding. These are sturdy, less awkward or cumbersome than before, prepared for their journey. Now, they carry a sort of empathetic balance of human tenderness or vulnerability in form, a willing exposure. They are hard-edged, bold, and concrete; declaring the transformative nature of their motivation.
Kim’s works inspire as much introspection and thoughtfulness as they inspire visual pleasure. I am fascinated by their construction, by the meticulous choice in line-weight and its variations; by the choices in how and where she blocks in solid black or leaves negative space. Kim’s work is a constant, endless wonder leaving me breathlessly mystified. She muses on their cocoon-like nature, as possibly manifesting themselves as woven covers protecting something within them, shifting from what was to what will be. I think about the function and purpose of a cocoon, a tight housing made from miles of threaded wrapping — lines and layers. These structures envelop me, willing to transform, weaving and tracing their edges and everything in between them. I get lost in each line, in each space between a line. What is this transformation, this revelation? To know, we must go back to the idea of a new kind of tower; a tower more like a cocoon, full of potential.
A phrase jumps out from Kim’s notes, structures stand, colossal and capable. And I see my own note next to it, abandon engineering and I believe it means to teeter dangerously at the precipice of whatever is to come after what we have built is gone. A slant of line, leaning into the unknown; these are the towers, breaking free.
These layers are pulled from a reservoir of pre-printed source material on tissue paper, layered lines in carbon, or the soft grain of lithograph to compose new works of overlapping transparencies and the accumulation of marks and material. These cleverly arranged blocks and angles convince the eye to assist in the construction of these structures, or remark on the empty space around and between them. Forming gritty, rooted sentinels, this new population of shadowy charcoal and lithograph figures serve as a landed counterweight to the ethereality of the transparent layers of her collage. Hints of Futurist momentum appear in the way figures stand bold, darkened, in sharp contrast or relief, proceeding. These are sturdy, less awkward or cumbersome than before, prepared for their journey. Now, they carry a sort of empathetic balance of human tenderness or vulnerability in form, a willing exposure. They are hard-edged, bold, and concrete; declaring the transformative nature of their motivation.
Kim’s works inspire as much introspection and thoughtfulness as they inspire visual pleasure. I am fascinated by their construction, by the meticulous choice in line-weight and its variations; by the choices in how and where she blocks in solid black or leaves negative space. Kim’s work is a constant, endless wonder leaving me breathlessly mystified. She muses on their cocoon-like nature, as possibly manifesting themselves as woven covers protecting something within them, shifting from what was to what will be. I think about the function and purpose of a cocoon, a tight housing made from miles of threaded wrapping — lines and layers. These structures envelop me, willing to transform, weaving and tracing their edges and everything in between them. I get lost in each line, in each space between a line. What is this transformation, this revelation? To know, we must go back to the idea of a new kind of tower; a tower more like a cocoon, full of potential.
A phrase jumps out from Kim’s notes, structures stand, colossal and capable. And I see my own note next to it, abandon engineering and I believe it means to teeter dangerously at the precipice of whatever is to come after what we have built is gone. A slant of line, leaning into the unknown; these are the towers, breaking free.
Kim Van Someren, Voider, 2020 carbon transfer, lithography, silk tissue, and collage on paper, 19 x 11 inches image courtesy of J. Rinehart Gallery and the artist
This essay was originally printed in a beautiful hardbound coffee table book published by J. Rinehart Gallery in Seattle, Washington. This publication features full-page full color images of the artwork in Kim Van Someren's solo exhibition, A Slant of Line, for which this essay was written. You can purchase your copy here!