Katie Paterson

James Cohan is pleased to present There is another sky, a new exhibition by the Scottish artist Katie Paterson, on view from January 10 through February 22, 2025, at the gallery’s 52 Walker Street location. This is Paterson’s third solo exhibition with James Cohan and marks her first major presentation in New York in nearly a decade. The gallery will host an opening reception with the artist on Friday, January 10 from 6-8 PM, and a conversation between Paterson and Josiah McElheny, moderated by Cassie Packard, on Saturday, January 11 at 3 PM.  

Katie Paterson is renowned for her multi-disciplinary, conceptually-driven artwork that explores themes of nature, ecology, geology, and deep time. Through collaborations with scientists and researchers worldwide, her ambitious projects delve into humanity’s place on Earth within the vast framework of geological time and transformation. Employing advanced technologies and specialized knowledge, Paterson creates intimate, poetic, and thought-provoking works that challenge our perceptions of the world. Blending a Romantic sensibility with a rigorous, research-based approach and minimalist aesthetics, her art bridges the gap between the viewer and the farthest reaches of time.

Paterson frequently works serially, starting with a single, seemingly impossible Idea—represented in this exhibition and throughout her body of work as short, haiku-like sentences crafted in sterling silver. These sentences pose questions about deep time and the boundaries between reality and imagination. The works, which may or may not materialize, take form in the minds of those who engage with them, becoming an expression of the idea itself. Often, these initial concepts expand into a range of interlinked inquiries, both material and philosophical.

This exhibition brings together a body of new interconnected works that mark a significant expansion of Paterson’s studio practice. The artist has created paintings, sculptures, and works on paper with materials that embody the physicality of our world and its origins. Delicately marbled watercolors are made with water drawn from ancient ice cores. Minimalist geometric forms are painted with pigment ground from fossilized forms of the first life on this planet. Glass is fired with sands gathered from all the deserts on Earth. Black lacquer is infused with the ashes from over 10,000 unique species of trees. An hourglass is filled with stardust. An exquisitely hand-stitched embroidery brings extinct flowers back to life. Incense infuses the galleries with the scent of the first and last forests. The resulting objects distill vast, seemingly impossible distances into elegant forms, bringing our attention to an immense and tangible reality that lies beyond the limits of ordinary perception.

This exhibition will be punctuated by several intimate stagings of Paterson’s incense project, To Burn, Forest, Fire. The gallery will host an inaugural burning during the opening reception, and burnings every weekend through the run of the exhibition.

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