Karin Battin Is Swimming In Color and Mars

By J. Taylor Basker

Karin Batten, Swimming On Mars, 2018, Mixed Media on panel, 36”x40”. Photos by J. Taylor Basker.

Karin Battin’s exhibit at the June Kelly Gallery is an immersion in artwork that offers waves of shapes and colors, that pivot between organic and geometric shapes, uniting land and water, humans and nature, past and future, earth and the cosmos.

Karin Batten, Morning Bliss, 1990, 5”D x 13”W x 14”H, Ceramic.

A Polish-German trained swimmer, Battin loves all associated with water. She uses color and texture to explore and celebrate the experience of floating, pulsating, twisting and racing through water. These are paintings inside of paintings. Some swimmers are hidden in geometric designs. Others are submerged in fields of swirling shapes or organic forms. It is a rewarding treasure hunt to find them as in the swirls of Dark Tryst. Surfaces hold secret messages and references, as in Renewal’s enigmatic collaged photos of her painful post-war childhood.

Yet her narrative can also be explicit as she depicts her fervent belief in Interbeing – the insight that all creation is one. This belief enhances her vision of the exploration of space. Yet she critiques its rationale in Swimming in Mars, that gave the title to this show. Battin challenges those who want to leave earth due to its destruction by pollution, rather than using technology to save our planet. Each of the carefully painted realistic details delivers a message. Yet a different approach to this is seen in her hypnotic tribute to shells, Above Yellow. Here wild impasto vortexes pull the viewer into an alternate reality uniting the seen and the unseen.

Battin’s technique is impressive; her use of diverse materials is inventive and playful, like using glitter in paint. She easily handles both harsh geometric forms and dynamic organic shapes, smoothy harmonizing them. Battin courageously employs opposites in her imageries, as in Rotation, where oceanic imagery is contained in a confined geometric sphere. She gracefully transitions from realism to abstraction. These paintings compress energy and tension. Her process explains this. She begins by drawing on the floor with a long stick in charcoal on the canvas. Then she adds colors that guide her shapes and actions. These physical actions create strong movement, and the materials themselves dictate the conclusion. Battin both actually and metaphorically is swimming in her art.

Her ceramic sculptures are another example of this artist’s multivalent talent. She handles three dimensional objects with the same inventiveness as her paintings. The shapes undulate with a sensual handling of clay as strong colors subtlety flow over the surfaces.

This exhibit deserves several views. The show is extended until November 3 at 166 Mercer Street.