What material objects do we employ to explore our identity, express
our desires, signify behavioral tendencies, assert our gender? I am
interested in the irony and humor involved in the use of mass-produced
objects to manifest what is ultimately a unique notion of self.
My work fragments and flattens the human body as a painted ground,
whereas the inorganic object-the cultural signifier-upstages the
"body" in both treatment as well as detail. This changes when the
signifier makes contact with the body. That point of contact highlights
the moment when the individual is simultaneously actualized (by the
object's ability to reveal the body) and denied (by the banal ubiquity
of the object).
The objects I examine become dislocated bytes of visual information,
floating in a sea of pink, vaguely anchored by an insinuation of flesh
through minimal references to volume, shape, or color. The body is
made conspicuous by its very absence. The binding of a leather strap,
the attachment of fetish objects to the body, and the act of being
tattooed are a few examples of the play between the visibility and the
invisibility of the body that is revealed in our relationship to objects as
signifiers of personal identity.
Catherine Saiki is a painter from Oakland, California. She received her MFA in Painting from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2005 and her BA from Scripps College, in Claremont, California. Her work questions the use of mass-produced objects to manifest what is ultimately a unique notion of self. The objects she examines become dislocated bytes of visual information, floating in a sea of pink, vaguely anchored by an insinuation of flesh through minimal references to volume, shape, or color. The body is made conspicuous by its very absence. The binding of a leather strap, the attachment of fetish objects to the body, and the act of being tattooed are a few examples of the play between the visibility and the invisibility of the body that is revealed in our relationship to objects as signifiers of personal identity.