Cate White, The Fall, 2022.
Acrylic, latex, spray paint, glitter, collage on canvas
48 x 78 inches
You can take the artist out of Oakland, but can you take Oakland out of the artist? That’s a question prompted by Cate White’s exhibition of 12 new (2021-23) paintings titled Wheel of Fortune at the George Adams Gallery. After living and working in the hardscrabble environs of West Oakland for 15 years, White moved to bucolic Mendocino County in 2020. The change of scenery seems to have had some effect on her paintings, especially in terms of brighter, more ebullient colors. However, her themes, materials, and pictorial strategies are very similar to those of earlier works. Like those previous efforts, White’s new paintings are still abrasively zany, wickedly boisterous, and more than a little bit terrifying, touching on that raw Nietzschean nerve where satire, pathos and tragedy converge. For that reason, they are a timely antidote to a Northern California art scene currently dominated and somnambulated by sociological caregivers and high-end interior designers pretending to be art collectors.
White’s new paintings are dominated by caricatured human figures, often in groups and, in a few instances, anthropomorphized animals, as in The Peaceable Kingdom. It depicts a flatly painted dog’s face licking that of a timid cat. Many compositions are centralized, reminiscent of 15th-century altarpieces, subverted by White to thwart any notion of theological solace. For instance, in The Fall, a tree trunk is flanked by a quartet of standing figures, can be interpreted as an unholy family of white trash dullards. The patriarch of this unconventional family stands to the right, above a large chainsaw that has been used to cleave the tree, revealing a brightly colored patterned interior. In this work and others, White’s keen eye for telling details — such as the pack of Marlboros in the man’s shirt pocket – is evident. We can almost hear these people discussing their favorite Hee Haw reruns.
Cancelled, another multi-figure composition, shows a nude woman confined in stocks of the type once used to torture suspected witches. To the right, the red figure of Satan reaches over to stuff a plump hot dog into her mouth. A trio of sinister raptors complete the scene, which is tempting to read as a self-portrait. In The Flood, we see what might also be a self-portrait, this one in the guise of the multi-limbed Hindu deity Kali, painted blue from head to toe. Her octopus-like appendages clutch all kinds of telling objects (e.g., cell phone, paint tubes, machine gun, prescription drug bottle, gavel, erect penis, bloody machete) while her face greets our gaze with angry scorn.
The material and procedural aspects of White’s paintings also invite remark. She augments a wide array of acrylic colors with latex, glitter and spray paint to create surfaces that often seem like gaseous clouds of over-sweetened energy. Paint applications range from thin to thick, with reflective glitter used sparingly along with subtly integrated collage elements.
In their zany feverishness, White’s paintings hark back to those of Roy De Forest and Peter Saul. They also tip their hats to late-1970s “Bad Painting,” where bad meant transgressive naughtiness rather than incompetence. Where White’s paintings differ from these precedents is the point where supercilious jokiness gives way to the kind of sheer panic that no amount of absurdist whistling in the dark can ward off. There are many raw nerves in these paintings that belie their everyday narrations, creating a compelling friction.
Cate White: “Wheel of Fortune” @George Adams Gallerythrough June 28, 2024.
About the author: Mark Van Proyen’s visual work and written commentaries emphasize the tragic consequences of blind faith in economies of narcissistic reward. Since 2003, he has been a corresponding editor for Art in America. His recent publications include Facing Innocence: The Art of Gottfried Helnwein (2011) and Cirian Logic and the Painting of Preconstruction (2010). To learn more about Mark Van Proyen, readAlex Mak’s interviewon Broke-Ass Stuart’s website.