Kate Conlon

Kate Conlon’s multi-media work exists in a space between research, making, and speculative thinking, driven by the artist’s desire to simply “figure something out.” From prints and sculptures to books and mechanical devices, the wide-ranging objects that emerge from Conlon’s practice exist both as things in themselves and also as touchstones within a larger process of perpetual inquiry. As Conlon poses questions to solve and mines her own notes and ephemera, she circles back to the curiosity, doubt, incongruence, and fleeting euphoria experienced in the studio to drive her questioning forward—even when the question is as fundamental as “what should I ask?”

For her exhibition at Goldfinch, Conlon will present a variety of objects and tools for making and for thinking, and for thinking through the act of making. An artist-designed workbench will support this network of objects, whose forms vary from utilitarian and familiar to mysterious and meditative. The objects and their modular support structure become an interconnected system of inquiry, in which tools are used to seek both answers and questions. Considered more broadly, Conlon’s exhibition serves as an ongoing examination of the equivocal relationships between problems and solutions, systems and their parts, and beginnings and endings.

Artist Bio:

Kate Conlon is a Chicago-based artist whose work dissects a range of strategies we use to make sense of the world. The resulting artwork takes the form of writing, book arts, printmaking and kinetic sculpture.

Conlon’s work has been exhibited at venues including MANA Contemporary Chicago, 68 Projects Berlin, Museu do Douro and The Grand Rapids Art Museum. She has received grants and residencies from Kala Art Institute, ACRE, and Chicago Artists Coalition. She was recently named the 2019 Artist in Residence of the Chicago Public Libraries.

Conlon is a co-founder of Fernwey Gallery and Limited Time Engagement Press and currently teaches in the Printmedia departments of SAIC and Columbia College Chicago.