Katherine
Mitchell
DiRico

Melt (a performance, a residue)

2023 - ongoing

In my work, time functions not as a chronological construct, but as an ever-shifting phenomenon that evades permanence. Like iridescence, which in its geometrically myriad viewing structure promotes multiplicity; time (and space) undulate like a rhizome in every direction, shifting continuously. The use of ice in my work came about recently when considering how materials coalesce and interact on a surface to leave a trace of movement, or change. In relation to deep geographic time, I wanted to internalize a relationship between the scale of a glacier melting and the scale of the palm of my hand. Could I actually feel the scale of that phenomenon? Could I experience it's loss? Accustomed already to working with water and various fast-moving materials, ice seemed especially interesting to me because of its pace of movement across a surface. If I slowed down the material interactions, what could I discover?  Further complicated by the lens, the video gives us access to moments we might not otherwise recognize.

I design situations in my work where I cannot control the outcome. Setting up situations where chance must be an integral part of the outcome, where the materials and I are performing together in space and time, the drawing becomes almost secondary; a residue of the action.  Layered with a mediatized lens, the work gives way to moments we cannot grasp in real time.   In fact perhaps those moments were never meant for us.  It is in this negotiation, between the material and the mediatized, when time and outcome are slippery, that my practice begins to be apparent.

/ Katherine Mitchell DiRico, 2023