Katerina Lanfranco | Nancy Hoffman Gallery

Katerina Lanfranco
"Ursus Horribilis"
September 9 - October 18, 2006

The first exhibition in Nancy Hoffman's Project Space for the fall season is entitled "Ursus Horribilis" an installation by Katerina Lanfranco. The title comes from the Latin (scientific) name for Grizzly Bear. This is the artist's first solo show with the gallery, an ambitious undertaking on which she worked for a year. The exhibition opens on September 9th and continues through October 18th.

Katerina Lanfranco, Ursus Horribilis,
2006, mixed media installation, 96 x 216 x 36 inches

Ursus Horribilis comprises two major oil paintings and a sculptural environment or diorama seen behind a vitrine in the style of a Museum of Natural History presentation, in which everything is made by the artist's hand. This monumental installation 8 feet in height and over 18 feet in width addresses the artist's prime concern in her work: the intersection between nature and culture.

Lanfranco began working on dioramas as an undergraduate student. Always interested in nature and the world in which we live, she worked at the Royal Ontario Museum, a natural history museum in Toronto in the entomology department, classifying moths, based on visual similarities and differences, organizing them and putting them into a sequence. In Ursus Horribilis Lanfranco joins her interest in science and the natural world with myth--Grizzly Bear, a legend of the wilderness, and the most ferocious animal in North America. To one side of the bear is a painting addressing the issue of Creationism, to the other of Evolutionism. The paintings mirror each other composi- tionally, and include reference to real as well as invented aspects of nature. The dialectic between what is "real" and what is "fictional" is at the heart of all of Lanfranco's work.

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Katerina Lanfranco, Ursus Horribilis (detail),
2006, mixed media installation, 96 x 216 x 36 inches

Unlike images of bears known to the reader, this is a mythic bear named Ursus horribilis scurra—horrible jester bear. Lanfranco writes, "has adapted to its environment by growing horns as a form of protection, and a tail to counterbalance its weight when forced to stand upright. However, the function of its pod-like organs remains mystery-ous." The artist's bear is made of wire and wood, papier-mache, and covered with rabbit fur the artist obtained from recycled coats online. Larger than human scale Ursus stands over the viewer with jaw wide-open, a threatening presence. The bear wears his heart on his fur, a cascade of pink bulbous organ-like shapes protrude from the chest of the bear. What does the artist suggest with this pink opening in the creature's fur? Is it a tender spot, is it a reference to the "teddy bear" adored by children, or is it meant to repulse as an open organ might? Perhaps the appendages to the bear, the tail, horns and exposed heart may suggest the changes that might occur due to environmental shifts. The tree accompanying the bear is based on a glass sponge, considered by many biolo-gists as the oldest living animal. Lanfranco juxtaposes the oldest living animal with a fantastical creation of her own.

Katerina Lanfranco, Ursus Horribilis (detail),
2006, mixed media installation, 96 x 216 x 36 inches

The three panels are tied together by the artist's landscape: the sky is pink, mauve, golden with cloud-like shapes in each panel; undulating pale green hills roll through each panel at the edge of a flowing stream. In the foreground of each part of the triptych is an animal, a mythic creature of nature: an owl with horns, the bear, a giraffe with wings and a single horn symbolizing purity.

Katerina Lanfranco, Ursus Horribilis (detail),
2006, mixed media installation, 96 x 216 x 36 inches

Katerina Lanfranco, Ursus Horribilis (detail),
2006, mixed media installation, 96 x 216 x 36 inches

The canvas to the left depicts Evolutionary Biology, beginning with scientists' big bang theory. The crystal-like shapes in the painting suggest the growth of organisms. The shells, plants and flowers are based on prehistoric "models." The finch is the bird Darwin used in his theory of Evolution, and from the apple of knowledge in the hand of the chimpanzee grows the double helix. The scene is brimming with life and its evolutionary energies. To the right the artist depicts Biblical Creation; the spheres rotating through the painting suggest the seven days of creation. The tree of knowledge with apples and a python parallel the painting on the left. Parallel too is Lanfranco's use of birds: the hummingbird and the bird of paradise. The hybrid animal in this panel is inspired by an image from Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights.

Lanfranco creates a highly charged contemporary triptych. Ursus Horribilis both invites the viewer close to examine its myriad details, and keeps the viewer at arm's length.

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Katerina Lanfranco, Ursus Horribilis (detail),
2006, mixed media installation, 96 x 216 x 36 inches

Katerina M. Lanfranco was born in 1978. She received an M.F.A. in Studio Art from Hunter College, City University of New York and a B.A. in Art as well as a B.A. in Visual Theory and Museum Studies from the University of California at Santa Cruz.

The artist's work has been shown at Hunter College Times Square Gallery, New York, Artists Space, New York, Fahnemann Projekte, Berlin, Altman Building, New York, Hunter College, New York, Kresge Town Hall, among others. Her work is include in numerous collections, among them Kupferstichkabinett Museum of Prints and Drawings, Berlin, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawing Collection.

Artist's Biography

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