Garfield Park-based gallery Goldfinch opened “Play the Fool,” a solo show with works by Em Kettner in late October. I traveled to the gallery earlier last week to examine the works that sit, live, and perform on the shelves and walls of the gallery. With the recent stay-at-home advisory in place, the entire exhibition is also viewable on the Goldfinch website with extensive documentation. Kettner’s charms and cabinet curiosities can be seen as characters in a larger story or narrative that we have yet to finish. In an interview with Goldfinch curator Elizabeth Lalley, Kettner explains that she’s always been interested in votive objects carried by “pilgrims, saints, and children; those used in healing or transformation ceremonies.” In “Play the Fool,” the sacred characters do have a supernatural quality to them, especially those who have the face of a human, but take on the shape of a bed, thin cone, or twisted pretzel.
Kettner, who lives with a rare form of muscular dystrophy, re-imagines the disabled body in her works. As someone who relies on other people for a physical support system, these miniature sculptures depict those moments of support. Kettner typically needs someone to aid in her standing up, and her sculptures imitate these additional limbs in her everyday life. “I have four extra limbs working in tandem with mine,” says Kettner. And these works mimic the “moments of expansion, mutualism, and dependence.”
Through 12/5, Fridays and Saturdays, noon-4 PM by appointment, closed 11/27-28, Goldfinch, 319 N. Albany, info@goldfinchgallery.org, goldfinch-gallery.com. Online exhibition view on Goldfinch’s website available 24/7, e-mail for private view online.
