Thread on plywood, smoke and foliage, cast pigment on drywall, nail polish on slip-cast porcelain, and electroplated grapevines. Kim Faler’s art is an alchemy of everyday things, cultivating empathy for our ability to apprehend and appreciate beauty in the fleeting moments of life. Through sculpture, installation, photography, and drawing, she makes the mundane mysterious and the common uncanny.

Faler’s works draw inspiration from moments of congruence and beauty in the day-to-day. She transforms and exaggerates patterns, tones, forms, and textures noticed in quotidian moments, in order to draw our attention to the tension between being present, holding on and letting go as the moments pass. A precarious pile of rocks becomes slip-cast porcelain faced with brilliant color in The Wait. In Excuse Me, aerial views of an ocean tide become snapshots of froth and murk filling the frame as flocked graphite and mica on Mylar. In Sonder, grapevines are electroplated and fused together with what looks like pink bubblegum to become a shimmering cloud.

You Don’t Know My Horizon brings together select works by Faler from the last ten years, featuring signature projects from residencies with the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation in Captiva, Florida and Artpace in San Antonio, Texas. The exhibition also includes a restaging of one of her earliest performance works as well as a new site-specific installation for the Bell Gallery. In this work, the artist explores glass for the first time in collaboration with students and alumni from the Rhode Island School of Design Glass Department.

Written & curated by Ian Alden Russell