The Great Fires

KATHY BUTTERLY REACHES NIRVANA

In Thought Presence, on view at James Cohen Gallery, Kathy Butterly rightly takes her place as one of the greatest artists living and working today. In this masterful show that includes twenty-four ceramic sculptures and fifteen drawings, Butterly is as nimble and dynamic as ever. The scale shift in several of the works on view reveals an artist who is incessantly on the move, continuing to expand the limitless boundaries of her practice with a singular panache for exquisite color, line, and form.

Beautifully displayed, Butterly’s brilliant and modestly scaled sculptures give way to larger, irregularly bulbous forms and elaborate handles. Where the earlier work alluded to the body and her intimate dialogue with the history of painting and sculpture, the newer work retains all of this while revealing an increasing freedom in her application of paint and use of glazes—the vessels are fired and glazed often upward of 30 times. Add to this a renewed presence and remarkable weight, Butterly’s Thought Presence is a striking evolution of her accomplishments on full display. Hats off, Kathy!

—Steve Rivera

09.13.18