Antonia Kuo

Kindly donated by the artist and Chapter NY, New York

About this work: 

The center panel is a 35mm photograph of a landscape from the American West (specifically Bryce Canyon in Utah). Some remnants of the sprocket holes are left to give a sense of the enlarged film material. The outer panels are from a singular abstract piece split in two, a unique chemical painting on silver gelatin paper. The holistic sense of the image is meant to evoke notions of earth and landscape, geologic time -- the title Strata further emphasizing the ancient topographic makeup of stone, mountain and earth. The aggregate image is simultaneously a macro and micro interpretation of the landscape it depicts. Kuo's family has roots in metals and mining in Montana; Strata can be perceived in relation to this aspect of her personal history and background.

Antonia Kuo (b. 1987, New York, NY, lives and works in New York). Kuo’s practice centers around recording, image-making, and the potential of the photographic medium to explore modes of creation and perception. She creates her own intensive processes by which images and materials can be alchemically transformed. In her unique “photochemical paintings” she layers formal elements based on industrial materials and machine parts with imagined—often intuitively derived—natural forms and gestures. She merges these discordant elements, evoking an intensity that underlines doubt but retains a reverent attitude toward the chaos and beauty of “natural” phenomena, energies, and matter. 

Kuo received an MFA from Yale University in 2018, her BFA from School of Fine Arts Boston and Tufts University in 2009, and a one-year certificate from the School of the International Center of Photography in 2013. Her work has been exhibited at Chart, New York (2022); Each Modern, Taipei (2022); MAMOTH, London (2022); Make Room, Los Angeles (2021); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2020); Rubber Factory, New York (2018); and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2016). Kuo has performed and screened her work at Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, NY (2017); Knockdown Center, Queens, NY (2017); MoMA PS1, Queens, NY (2015); and the Musee d’art contemporain de Montreal [2014], among others. She has been an artist-in-residence at Mass MoCA (2018), Vermont Studio Center (2016), The Banff Centre (2015), and was a MacDowell Colony Fellow (2014). Kuo’s work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and Centre Pompidou, Paris. Her work is currently on view in a group exhibition at Jack Barrett, New York, and will be included in an upcoming group exhibition at Harper’s, New York.