Beat It (still), 2014, single channel video with sound; 15:40 min. Courtesy the artist.
Beat It, 2014, single channel video with sound; 15:40 min. Courtesy the artist.
Kate Gilmore is widely known for her physically demanding and darkly humorous videos that explore themes of female identity, displacement, desire, and defeat. She is most often the sole protagonist in her performance-based videos, which involve the artist subjecting herself to daunting and uncomfortable tasks of simultaneous creation and destruction. In Beat It, on view for the first time in New York on the occasion of Queens International 2016, the camera looks through a circular opening placed above the location of the action as we first only hear a repeated striking sound on an unseen wood and drywall structure. Gradually, a circular frame allowing the sight of the space begins to be filled up with torn pieces screenprinted with the words “beat it”. Midway into the video, Gilmore herself breaks through and joins the mess inside, pushing fragments through the interior and upending the viewer’s bird’s eye perspective on the set. As she lifts and pushes the wall fragments through this opening, she is obscured again, leaving a collage that repeats the phrase “beat it” in her place.
Kate Gilmore received an MFA from the School of Visual Arts (2002) and a BA from Bates College (1997). She has participated in the 2010 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, The Moscow Biennial, Moscow, Russia (2011), PS1 Greater New York, MoMA/PS1, New York, NY (2005 and 2010) in addition to solo exhibitions at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut (2014), MoCA Cleveland, Cleveland, OH (2013), Public Art Fund, Bryant Park, New York, NY (2010), and Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA (2008). She has been the recipient of numerous awards such as the Art Prize/ Art Juried Award, Grand Rapids, Michigan (2015), Rauschenberg Residency Award, Captiva, FL (2014), Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome (2007/2008), The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, New York (2009), Art Matters Grant, New York (2012), Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Award for Artistic Excellence, New York (2010), the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance, New York, NY (2006), and the New York Foundation for The Arts Fellowship (2012 and 2005). Her work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art; Brooklyn Museum; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Rose Art Museum, Waltham, MA; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana, IN; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL.