NEW YORK, NY –– September 5th, 2024 –– Kathryn Markel Fine Arts is delighted to announce an upcoming exhibition of works by Sue Heatley, Soft Landings. It will be Heatley’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, and will take place at the gallery’s new project space inside of its location at 179 10th Avenue.
Heatley’s brazen, fleshly forms invite the viewer to compose their own narrative, abandoning the confines of representation. Constructed in cotton, foam, and plywood and clad in intricate and whimsical patterns, these pieces are at once enrapturing and un-commanding. Heatley states, “My visual language recalls the body, the landscape, the psychological, and the manufactured.” Visceral forms, under Heatley’s hand, become expansive and undulating. In tandem with the petite gallery space they are mounted in, Soft Landings acts as a unique respite from the city’s brutal surroundings: Quite literally a soft place to land.
Heatley describes her body of work as “colliding together,” an apt description, too, of her process. The artist works intuitively, beginning with individual compositions that “swap in and out.” Heatley claims she is satisfied when the work is “unlike anything [she’s] ever seen.” Indeed, the works in Soft Landings present as foreign entities, known to the viewer once they craft their own narrative with the art.
Heatley encourages her viewers not to identify shapes or forms, and instead “dive in and swim around.” Confined to the diminutive surroundings of the project space, the viewer is meant to be wholly immersed.
Sue Heatley has exhibited across the nation, at a formidable variety of galleries and institutions. Her work has been shown at the Virginia Museum Studio School, the Drawing Room in Easthampton, NY, and Site: Brooklyn among others. Her work is featured in collections such as the Estée Lauder Companies, the Medical College of Virginia, and the United States Department of State.