KIM VAN SOMEREN
MISTAKEN FOR MEASURE
J. Rinehart Gallery announces our second solo exhibition by artist and educator, Kim Van Someren. Van Someren’s exhibition, Mistaken for Measure, brings together an intense body of work understanding that metaphorical gender and intentness of structure can be altered through mark making.
Mistaken for Measure reflects on compositions from playfully focused, sewn works. Van Someren hand draws each stitch using traditional etching techniques. The works in this series are deprived of sound foundation, they allow for structure to be gentle like water, relaxed, and animated. The exploration of the surfaces, the act of using repetitive linework allowed the measurable mistakes to be valid. Surface became playful. Textures became fragile. Structures became disrupted. They are broken and unapologetic.
Kim Van Someren is the Instructional Technician in Printmaking + Painting + Drawing at the University of Washington. She holds an MFA in Printmaking from the University of Washington (2004) and a BA from the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse (2002). She has taught Printmaking at Pratt Fine Arts Center, The National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Frye Art Museum, the Seattle Arts Museum, Pilchuck, and the University of Washington.
Van Someren has exhibited locally and nationally; her work included in several collections including Microsoft, New York Public Library, the University of Iowa, the University of Washington, and Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
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For this body of work, I reflected on Sessions, a small and intense body of work made during the pandemic. These sewn works were playfully focused, collaborative (with my children) and a nod to structure as satire.
As a maker, the pandemic forced questions of craft, fragility, function, and essentiality. My work has always been architecturally driven. I became aware of the design of essential and functional structures as signs of dominance, an absolute, and congruency. I found this in structures in farming, spirituality, air and warcraft. There, I found an intent for the flat and sensible surfaces of forms in our world; I became interested in changing that.
Understanding that metaphorical gender and intentness of structure can be altered through mark making has been in the forefront of this body of work.
To understand the complexity and parody of the sewn structures, I hand-drew each stitch using traditional etching techniques. I came to peace with the mistakes, irregularities, and gentle stitches, one mark at a time. Compositions were also rearranged to create new versions of structures.
These structures, deprived of sound foundation, believability, and even context sway and fold like paper or billboards. They resonate lace, cursive handwriting, and nets. They allow for structure to be gentle like water, relaxed, and animated.
The exploration of the surfaces, the act of using repetitive linework allowed the measurable mistakes to be valid.
Surface became playful.
Textures became fragile.
Structures became disrupted.
They are broken and unapologetic.