'Elizabeth Karsch: Eye of the Storm' Opens at AB NY Gallery

AB NY Gallery in East Hampton presents “Elizabeth Karsch: Eye of the Storm,” an exhibition running August 23 to 31. This solo exhibition of recent works on paper by Karsch was curated by art advisor and independent curator Casey Dalene.

“Eye of the Storm” is the first opportunity for Karsch’s large-scale series from 2023 to be viewed in its entirety. The show opens with a reception on Friday, August 23, from 5 to 7 p.m. An artist and curator Q&A follows on Thursday, August 29, at 6 p.m.

As an artist, Elizabeth Karsch has long worked in response to the environment around her. In the summer of 2023, this manifested in an intensely different world for her to navigate — painting with more physicality and speed than ever before. Utilizing the entirety of her small backyard studio in Sag Harbor, Karsch found herself moving back and forth across a 5-by-7-foot piece of thick white paper, pushing acrylic, charcoal and pastels across its surface, her body undulating as circular tornado-like shapes emerged. These shapes have served Karsch in her work before, as stand-ins for her mother who passed away in 2005, but had not appeared in her studio practice for over a decade.

Now re-emerging, the shape’s meaning has deepened and evolved as Karsch evaluates her own shifting role as mother and creator.

Curator Casey Dalene first saw Karsch’s tornado series on Instagram in one of the artist’s usual studio updates. Shocked at her departure from more densely layered abstractions, Dalene’s intrigue led her to Karsch’s studio where she experienced the new work in person and fell deeply in love with it.

Communicating beyond her speech impediment, Karsch has an incredible capacity to derive color and form from her emotive state.

“As a stutterer, words often fail me, but making marks on paper provides an immediate and direct release of energy that expands beyond the limits of my vocabulary,” said Karsch in a statement. “I am motivated by the idea that a person’s energy can be bound into a mark, and the fact that this mark has never been made before (or can never be reused) gives it an honesty and authenticity that established words lack.

“My paintings are personal statements — extensions of myself,” she continued. “I take a truth, an intimate emotion, a question, an answer — and paint it. It is natural for me to meditate upon reality rather than on the romantic, and yet my work often results in a mixture of both.”

ABNY Gallery is at 62 Newtown Lane in East Hampton. For more information, visit abnygallery.com.