Kate Bright - Between the Woods - 4 - Kate Bright's Post-Ironic Landscapes

Sep 28, 2026

Exhibition text for Kate Bright’s Between the Woods, dated May 2–30, 2008. The essay by Judith E. Stein analyzes Bright’s wintery landscape series and the use of glitter, treating it as a low-status but luminous material that references kitsch, camp, and postmodern irony while also emphasizing sincerity. It compares Bright’s light effects to strategies in abstract art and describes how her cropped details, manufactured sublimity, and absence of human traces shape viewer experience across multiple works.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages30

Reading Time46 min

AccessFree to download

Kate Bright's Post-Ironic Landscapes

Glitter as sincerity and artifice

Visual strategies and comparisons

Landscapes, composition, and setting

*X-428-007*IIIiII肛INIII Kate BrightBetween the Woods # L O CK S G A L L E R Y 6oo Washington Square SouthPhiladelphia,PA 19106www.locksgallery.cominfo@locksgallery.com215.629.1000 tel215.629.3868 fax # Kate BrightBetween the Woods May 2-30,2008 Essay by Judith E.Stein 4 # Kate Bright's Post-Ironic Landscapes JUDITH E.STEIN In her new series of wintery landscapes,Kate Bright con-tinues to exploit the reflective potential of glitter,that low-life material with a rap sheet as long as tinsel's.Kidsadore craft projects with these messy sparkles,and takevirtual advantage of its razzmatazz for Myspace profiles,animated tiles and computer wallpaper.Known by thecompany it keeps,glitter stars in cliché holiday sceneswith glistening patches to simulate snow.Surely an artistwho colludes with mass culture and its sentimental trap-pings is advancing the ironic discourse of post-mod-ernism. But a sophisticated“wink wink”was not whatBright had in mind when she raided the hobby aisle,justas it played no part in the work of her influential contem-porary Karen Kilimnik,who uses spare points of glitter tosignal theatrical fancy.Speaking in 2001,Bright confided to an interviewer: The glitter,from the moment I picked it up,was screaming to be sunshine on water...l earnestly want to capture that in a painting.In a way,it's about the impossible notion ofpossessing the sublime... There is always this thing with glitter,allthe references to kitsch and camp,whichthose Christmas cards had.But at the sametime they are genuinely endearing,in an 'oldlady-ish'way.There is a sweetness to them...[my work is]not about kitsch or irony.It'scompletely—I want to say heartfelt—butheartfelt is stillso kitsch.Perhaps they areromantic,or dare I say,genuine. The quest for sublimity,that mingling of astonishmentand awe before the majesty of nature,is infrequentlyexpressed as a goal of art in this day and age,and evenrarer to find linked to a de-based material.But we musttake Bright at her word:it is sincerity that fuels her prac-tice. Her use of glitter to simulate light within paintedlandscapes connects her work to related strategies inabstract art:both David Smith's burnished surfaces andRichard Serra's graphite drawings physically capture theenvironment's available light.Jane Kaufman's work withiridescent feathers,Lucas Samaras'mirrored pieces andThomas Lanigan-Schmidt's aluminum foil assemblages are a sampling of art by other predecessors with thecanny instincts of a magpie. What Bright alone celebrates in her new body ofwork is glitter's inherent visual pun on the crystallinebeauty of snow.As in her last series of watery reflections,there are few clues in her closely-cropped details aboutcontext.Branches may originate in the space outside thepicture plane and move beyond the boundary of theframe.In Loaded,the heavy white cargo all but obliteratessight of the branches underneath.As in Bough,Thicketand Spinney,the tight focus draws us in close,with no ori-enting references except the sky,a compositional choicethat keeps viewers hovering like hummingbirds out ofseason. Figures are not part of nature's romance for her.Nowhere are there footprints,wheel tracks or man-madestructures.Although humans may have pruned thecopses and created the pathways,no one has passedthrough for some time.It is as if she had stopped "without a farmhouse near,"to watch the snow fall withRobert Frost,and then stayed around to paint it after the squall.In Grove,Copse and Avenue,she sites viewers onthe ground,opening the distance with tunneling lanes. The photographs—not her own—on which shebases her compositions depict winter woodlands in suchdisparate locales as Wales,Michigan,and BritishColumbia.Snow,that great equalizer,renders sense ofplace a non-issue. I use glitter to make the paintings betterthan I could ever paint them.I couldn't dothat sparkling business with just ordinarypaint,and certainly not acrylic.You are con-stantly reminded with the applica

FAQs

What material does Kate Bright use to achieve the light effects in her winter landscapes?

She uses glitter to simulate light within painted landscapes, emphasizing the painted surface rather than creating an illusion.

How does Judith E. Stein interpret the role of glitter in Bright’s work?

Stein frames glitter as a visual pun on snow’s crystalline beauty, while arguing that sincerity fuels Bright’s practice even when references to kitsch and camp appear.

What compositional features does the essay highlight in Bright’s landscapes?

The essay emphasizes closely cropped details, branches that move beyond the frame, tunneling lanes that open distance on the ground, and a lack of footprints or lasting human presence.

Sep 28, 2026

Uploaded by Riley West