Kate Gottgens. THE RISING SEA

“I attempt to create a narrative that has no beginning or ending or clear outcome” - Kate Gottgens says about her work. 

A contemporary South African artist, Kate Gottgens regards herself as a conceptual painter, interrogating the how and why of representation and the mechanics of image-making. A lover of paradox and ambiguity she discourages a single definitive reading of her paintings, which are characterised by an atmosphere of half-forgotten impressions re-imagined.

Working from photographic sources, Gottgens manipulates her narratives to express her fascination with history, memory, psychological states, and a quality of mystery and possible disorder that threatens our everyday life  

In ‘The Rising Sea” her palette has become muted and subtle. There is a quality of dream-like liminality in the shadowy half-defined figures and scenes that partially disappear and reappear.

However, paintings of Kate Gottgens possess one more extraordinary quality. When looking at her work the viewer finds oneself in a trap of ones own memories recreated by the artist. By playing with half-forgotten memories we are dragged back into our own past and one is mesmerized and rolled like a wave into a rising sea, raising to the surface the myriad of experienced feelings, which like souvenirs from the past will now float to the surface and remain conscious forever.