Art for Ukraine

The labour-intensive drawing methods employed by Cat Roissetter are part of a unique visual language, where distortion of form is a symptom of the gradual degeneration of materials and an intensity of observation that verges on the neurotic. Roissetter’s work draws on diverse source material, including personal photographs and found illustrations, which are subjected to the various destructive processes including photocopying, acid-baths, sun-bleaching, dust-gathering, damp and rot. 

The present work was part of Roissetter’s 2020 exhibition at Cob Gallery, ‘English Filth’, the title of which had as much to do with the material with which she works – oil-soaked paper – as it did with a specific idea of English culture: a crusted veneer of politeness that masks a festering mass of seediness and vice. Drawing on Roissetter’s long interest in English portraiture, Blue Liquid Figure was also prompted by the strange absence of nudes from the domestic tradition – and a suspicion that this links up with an English perception of nudity as always containing some element of lewdness or depravity. No naked body without a leering observer lurking behind a newspaper or a keyhole; no gilded drawing room without a grimy backstreet peepshow somewhere nearby.

Roissetter’s models’ bloated forms, tumbling like distended cherubs across the frame, emblematise an aesthetic mode where sexuality is inevitably accompanied by some suggestion of the farcical or grotesque. Seductive and unsettling, her layered, intricate but spacious drawings combine a sheepishly childlike innocence with a muffled sense of alarm. As in a nursery rhyme or fairy tale, there is often the suggestion of some sinister force bubbling up beneath the surface: a darker truth loitering just out of view.

Cat’s forthcoming solo exhibitions include Rural Scenes, Cob Gallery, London, UK (2022); Solo exhibitions include Nathalie Karg, New York, USA (2021) and A Thousand Plateaus, Brocket Gallery, London, UK (2016); Group exhibitions include Artissima, Torino, Italy (2020); Draw Art Fair, Saatchi Gallery, London UK (2019); and Drawing Now, Carreau du Temple, Paris, France (2018). 

Exhibition History
The work featured in Cat Roissetter’s solo exhibition English Filth at Cob Gallery, London (10 September - 3 October 2020).
 
@catroissetterart
https://www.catroissetter.art 

The work is a generous donation from Cob Gallery. 
© Text + Image @cobgallery