Kate Meissner

Kate Meissner’s (b. 1995, Sacramento, CA) carefully constructed oil paintings depict human subjects of highly ambiguous societal identity and material nature. In compressed, luridly-lit spaces, these bodies pose and contort, possibly for the viewer’s pleasure while potentially consumed by ecstasy or pain.

Meissner’s paintings are populated by multiple species: idealized feminine forms rendered in supple gradients, non-normative and emphatically fleshy beings with prosthetic appendages, and almost-alien creatures for whom a digitally-inflected perfection of surface becomes uncanny. Nightclub VIP rooms, hospitals, and theaters inform Meissner’s settings - all places where being seen, watched, and examined have distinct and intense psychological consequences. The figurative element is always tenuous, made strange by unnatural light, shifting depictions of skin, atypical anatomy, and highly ambiguous motivations.

These subjects might be seductive or anxiety-inducing, but they never reveal themselves as fully human. Meissner’s meticulous process draws upon many influences. Small, intricately constructed physical maquettes, found and staged photography, and digitally manipulated and created images are all utilized as source material. Meissner’s work is also highly informed by contemporary cinema - in particular, David Lynch’s color-saturated scandalous melodramas and David Cronenberg’s psychological and physical distortions of flesh. Through her fusion of traditional naturalism, technologically-derived imaging, and lush cinematic effect, Meissner explores the beautiful and grotesque in paintings that are as unnerving as they are seductive.

CV