Nina Katchadourian’s current exhibition at Catharine Clark Gallery is organized around a simple conceit: all the work was made while in flight, utilizing only the materials provided by the airline with the artist’s camera phone providing documentation. Making use of this otherwise lost time during the past two years on a staggering number of flights around the world, Katchadourian’s in-flight meals, neck pillow, glossy magazines, and fellow passengers become fodder for a series of humorous photographic and video pieces.
The ongoing project began in March 2010 on a flight to New Zealand. Preparing for Dunedin Public Art Gallery’s Visiting Artist Programme, Katchadourian had 22 hours of flight time from her home in Brooklyn to Dunedin. As an artist interested in the potential of the mundane to become interesting through the lens of her creative process, the project was a challenge to herself. Could she create work stealthily and with originality or would she succumb to boredom and cramped sleep?
The result (shown at Catharine Clark in its second iteration) is a mixed bag, with some of the interventions falling a bit flat. But these are outweighed by the many laugh-out-loud situations created with the most rudimentary of tools. The front room of the gallery, painted a rich red, is filled with small, faux-historical frames containing Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style. In this hilarious grouping, Katchadourian ingeniously replicates frilled collars and headdresses with toilet seat covers, recreating art-historical poses with intensely concentrated expressions on her face. Without reference material, this series is a testament to the artist’s familiarity with that genre of 15th-century painting — the resemblances are uncanny.
Nina Katchadourian, Lavatory Self-Portrait in the Flemish Style #18-19, 2011.
Another highlight of the show is the 2-channel video Acca Dacca Diptych, also created while in Flemish costume. I cannot reveal the punchline for fear of spoiling the surprise, but the jarring juxtaposition of old world and new adds a layer of contemporary relevance to the exhibition as a whole. While many of the pieces offer irreverent takes on the contents of an airline cabin, they remain a part of that enclosed space. Acca Dacca Diptych transcends its setting and emphasizes the preposterousness of Katchadourian’s self-imposed situation: decked out as a burgher, sitting in a tiny lavatory for extended periods of time.