‘‘Windows’’, Katrina Beekhuis
IF I see a window or a window shape in the rectangular form of Drying rack assemblage, in the shape and space of Wire drawing (wall vent), or in the negative space of Sand chair (all works 2020), I run the risk of codifying my viewing experience of these works. In the short text by artist Katrina Beekhuis included in the publication accompanying her exhibition, Beekhuis questions this reflexive act of making sense of the world through association: this looks like that. Or more precisely, the speed of codification. Yet through the exhibition and work titles, and the works themselves, Beekhuis registers the perceptive impulse of the mind to connect like with like, to link experiences, to orient ourselves among the objects in our environments.
The exhibition title, ‘‘Window’’, for example, functions as a synonym of sorts for perception: the phenomenon and process that undergirds and orients Beekhuis’ practice. In the context of visual art practice, the figure and function of a window fittingly privileges visual perception. So in many ways (literally, conceptually, formally), Beekhuis has provided the visitor with a perceptual apparatus to apprehend the works, though it does not overdetermine the experience. To take one example, objects that appear to be found or repurposed objects (the drying rack) turn out to be carefully, even fastidiously handmade. Yet this attention is less in service of simulacrum, but directed towards the object itself: a caredriven fetishisation.