Beth Katleman (born 1959 in Park Forest, Illinois) is an American artist known for

porcelain Porcelain () is a ceramic material made by heating substances, generally including materials such as kaolinite, in a kiln to temperatures between . The strength and translucence of porcelain, relative to other types of pottery, arises mainl ...

assemblage sculpture cast from found objects. Her allegorical installations fall within the genre of

pop surrealism Lowbrow, or lowbrow art, is an underground visual art movement that arose in the Los Angeles, California area in the late 1960s. It is a populist art movement with its cultural roots in underground comix, punk music, tiki culture, graffiti, and h ...

, combining decorative elements, such as Rococo embellishments and 19th century

Toile de Jouy Toile (French for "canvas") is a textile fabric comparable to fine batiste with a cloth weave. Natural silk or chemical fiber filaments are usually used as materials. The word ''toile'' can refer to the fabric itself or to a test garment sewn ...

wallpaper scenery, with satirical references to consumer culture, fairy tales and classic literature. Katleman's work is in private and institutional collections and is exhibited internationally, including an installation commissioned by architect

Peter Marino Peter Marino (born 1949) is an American architect and Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. He is the principal of Peter Marino Architect PLLC, an architecture and design firm which he founded in 1978. The firm is based in New York City ...

for

Christian Dior Christian Ernest Dior (; 21 January 1905 – 24 October 1957) was a French fashion designer, best known as the founder of one of the world's top fashion houses, Christian Dior SE, which is now owned by parent company LVMH. His fashion houses a ...

, in the Hong Kong and London flagship boutiques. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, and is the recipient of the 2011 Moët Hennessey Prize, a Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation grant, the Watershed Generation X Award, a Kohler Arts/Industry Fellowship and a residency in Cortona, Italy sponsored by the

University of Georgia , mottoeng = "To teach, to serve, and to inquire into the nature of things.""To serve" was later added to the motto without changing the seal; the Latin motto directly translates as "To teach and to inquire into the nature of things." , establ ...

, Athens. Katleman holds a BA in English from

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, an MFA from

Cranbrook Academy of Art The Cranbrook Educational Community is an education, research, and public museum complex in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. This National Historic Landmark was founded in the early 20th century by newspaper mogul George Gough Booth. It consists of Cr ...

and an MBA in Arts Management from

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

Influences

Katleman's work addresses dualities between nature and culture; order and chaos; kitsch and fine art; dark humor and optimism; consumption and desire. Her sculpture is informed by parallels and differences between classic European decorative arts and American pop culture. The objects that she casts into sculpture are sourced from dime store trinkets, gadgets, dolls and toys. Katleman is influenced by porcelain rooms, such as The

Royal Palace of Aranjuez The Royal Palace of Aranjuez ( es, Palacio Real de Aranjuez) is one of the official residences of the Spanish royal family. It is located in the town of Aranjuez (Madrid), Spain. Established in the 16th century as a royal hunting lodge, the pala ...

in Spain; Toile de Jouy wallpaper found in

Versailles The Palace of Versailles ( ; french: Château de Versailles ) is a former royal residence built by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, about west of Paris, France. The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 1995 has been managed, u ...

and the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

; and time studying Italian porcelain reliefs in the Salottino di Porcellana room at the Royal Palace of Capodimonte, Naples, which she visited during an artist residency at the

American Academy in Rome The American Academy in Rome is a research and arts institution located on the Gianicolo (Janiculum Hill) in Rome. The academy is a member of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers. History In 1893, a group of American architects, ...

. Her early work incorporated bright colored glazes, gold details and overt references to pop art. Katleman's work has been included in group exhibitions intended to blur distinctions between fine art and design. In 1998 a work from the toilet series, produced during her Kohler Arts/Industry Fellowship, was included in ''Bathroom'' at the Thomas Healy Gallery, alongside

Andy Warhol Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...

and

John Waters John Samuel Waters Jr. (born April 22, 1946) is an American filmmaker, writer, actor, and artist. He rose to fame in the early 1970s for his Cinema of Transgression, transgressive cult films, including ''Multiple Maniacs'' (1970), ''Pink Flamin ...

. In 2019 the

Rhode Island School of Design Museum The Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design (RISD Museum) is an art museum integrated with the Rhode Island School of Design, in Providence, Rhode Island, US. The museum was co-founded with the school in 1877, and still shares multiple build ...

invited Katleman to create a site-specific installation in response to the 1969 exhibition ''Raid the Icebox I with Andy Warhol''. In 2010 Katleman transitioned to working entirely in white porcelain, often installed as sculptural tableaus to produce a three-dimensional wall paper effect. Literature, in particular classical mythology and fairy tales, also inspires the work.

Process

Katleman fabricates her sculptures using hand cast porcelain objects that are combined into a singular composition and

kiln A kiln is a thermally insulated chamber, a type of oven, that produces temperatures sufficient to complete some process, such as hardening, drying, or chemical changes. Kilns have been used for millennia to turn objects made from clay int ...

fired without a glaze to produce a matte white surface. A completed installation can contain up to 3,500 individual cast elements. The molds used to produce the castings are made after combinations of source materials are experimented with, using digital imaging software and hand drawn renderings. These 2D compositions are then used to visualize placement while working with figures from her studio library of objects.

Exhibitions

*Raid the Icebox Now, RISD Museum, Providence, Rhode Island *2018- Strange Arcadia, Spagnuolo Art Gallery, Georgetown University, Washington D.C. *2017- Confabulations of Millennia, Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, Maine *2016- Unconventional Clay, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri *2016- Contemporary Clay: A Survey of Contemporary American Ceramics, Western Carolina University Fine Arts Museum, Cullowee, North Carolina *2015- Tchotchke: Mass-Produced Sentimental Objects in Contemporary Art, The Gund Gallery, Gambier, Ohio *2011- Flora and Fauna: MAD about Nature, Museum of Art and Design, New York, New York *2011- Folly, Jane Hartsock Gallery, New York, New York *2011- Pavilion of Art and Design, New York, New York, London, England and Paris, France, Todd Merrill Studio Contemporary *2009- Selections from the Kohler Company Collection, 798 ArtZone, Beijing, China New Works/Old Story, Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, California *2008- The Diane and Sandy Besser Collection, M.H. de Young Museum, San Francisco, California *2000- Blown Away, Garth Clark Gallery, New York, New York *1998- Bathroom, Thomas Healy Gallery, New York, New York, curated by Wayne Koestenbaum *1996- The Pull of Beauty, Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York and the National Building Museum, Washington, D.C., curated by Kiki Smith and Victoria Milne *1994- Artists from the Archie Bray Foundation, Holter Museum of Art, Helena, Montana and University of Washington Art Gallery, Seattle, Washington

Collections

*Nike, United States *M. H. de Young Museum, San Francisco, California *Christian Dior Boutique, London *Christian Dior, Hong Kong *Ci Kim Arario Gallery Collection, South Korea *John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin *Kohler Company Collection, Kohler, Wisconsin *Archie Bray Foundation, Helena, Montana *Right Management, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania *Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Rhode Island *Kamm Teapot Foundation, Sparta, North Carolina

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Katleman, Beth Living people 1959 births Sculptors from Illinois People from Park Forest, Illinois 20th-century American women artists 21st-century American women artists American contemporary artists American women sculptors American women ceramists American ceramists Stanford University alumni Cranbrook Academy of Art alumni University of California, Los Angeles alumni