NERVOUS SYSTEM: KATE KLINGBEIL

Steve Turner is pleased to present Nervous System, a solo exhibition by Kate Klingbeil which features four recent paintings inspired by the artist’s experiences with chronic illness and her resulting medical anxiety caused by navigating the deteriorating American Healthcare system.

Klingbeil creates her idiosyncratic sculptural paintings by embedding found materials including rocks, sand, ceramic and zebra mussel shells (from an invasive mollusk) into fields of thick paint. Klingbeil is interested in the interwoven and interdependent structures within the human body, and the relationship between our environments, our supports, and our emotional health.

Chronically ill patients often find themselves without answers from medical professionals, and spend countless hours researching their symptoms and the connections between them, building maps of possible solutions to healing. Klingbeil finds this similar to the artist’s challenge of making less obvious connections between ideas in order to arrive at something that speaks to new ways of looking at the world.

“Painting allows me to turn the inside outwards and is the visible expression of my nervous system. Each mark is a physical testament to a sensory experience that regulates me. Painting becomes both a metaphor and a literal translation of the impulses of the nervous system.”