The NewYorker Magazine
on photographer, Kathy Sherman Suder
"A series of color-saturated pictures of boxers that owe more to Caravaggio than to Sports Illustrated. In one image, a boxer is laid out, perhaps knocked out, and the referee lurks in the corner of the frame; the foreshortened perspective leaves the boxer headless, his feet scrambled and his gloves touching as if in prayer. The chiaroscuro effect of these pictures—nary a fan can be seen in the background—forces you to concentrate on the bodies in the ring."
This summer, (2024) The Church and The Flag Art Foundation in New York City are collaborating on an exhibition in both of their venues. Strike Fast, Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing explores boxing as both theme and metaphor, evoking complex and multifaceted cultural meanings. Developed in tandem and curated independently, the two exhibitions feature over 100 works, including historical and contemporary pieces as well as newly commissioned work for the shows.
At The Church, Strike Fast, Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing is co-curated by Co-Founder Eric Fischl and Chief Curator Sara Cochran. The exhibition underscores boxing’s expansive place in human life and the varied ways it is perceived by a diverse array of artists. It is shorthand for the existential question “what is worth fighting for?” and themes of struggle, defiance, victory, martyrdom, and brutality. Contemporary work particularly questions its traditional symbolism of masculinity by challenging male domination of the sport, and brings up issues of race, poverty, and violence.
On view at The Church: June 24 – September 3, 2023
On view at The Flag Art Foundation: June 15 – August 11, 2023
On view at the Norton Museum Palm Beach: Winter 2024
“This show is a sermon about the belief and value we put on the struggle to be, to live, to understand, to love, to try, and to never give up. I believe everyone walking through our door holds these values to be true, and will recognize and appreciate all the creative ways artists have found to deal with the monumentality of meaningful living.”
— Eric Fischl
A Meditation on Strike Fast, Dance Lightly by Eric Fischl
Strike Fast, Dance Lightly is an exhibition of artists who have taken their cues from the imagery and accoutrements of boxing, not as sport but as metaphor for the physical and emotional battles waged over the demands of our spirit and our minds. It is a show of gilded darkness: a light filled arena, full of brute force and dark materials. This is a show by artists who’ve answered the bell and made art that asks each of us; What are we fighting for? What is worth fighting for? Pulling no punches, this show is poignant, powerful, rough and tender, full of creative raging.
Strike Fast, Dance Lightly is about weight class. It is the heavy weight of responsibility that comes with accepting the truths in our lives. Acknowledging the rules of the game without accepting its limitations, this is art that does what art is supposed to do: it points us in the direction of higher purpose.
The art works in Strike Fast, Dance Lightly reveal what it means to stay open, honest and in touch with our vulnerability, accept the risks we are willing to take to learn who we are, and the bravery to go toe to toe to face ourselves.
-ERIC FISCHL, 2023
Suder was invited to participate in the benefit art show at Psychic Readings Gallery of New York City, benefitting the 6th Street Community Center. Her unique, one of one, print, entitled The Last Resort (shown here), was auctioned Friday, December 15, 2023
TOXIKON, A Poison Apothecary
As part of the 2023 Bombay Beach Biennale, Kathy Sherman Suder unveiled her latest permanent installation in the California desert, entitled “TOXIKON”. A work of art dedicated to showcasing the looming environmental crisis, that is the chemical poisoning of the Salton Sea, which has ravaged the surrounding Bombay Beach community and surrounding Southern California cities over the last 50 years. Open 24/7 in Bombay Beach, California.
TOXIKON, is a poison apothecary - a piece of artistic activism that is infused by memento mori, an artistic or symbolic trope acting as a reminder of the inevitability of death. Suder produced over 100 glass bottled elixirs containing the toxic remnants of plant & wildlife she gathered from the shores of the Salton Sea. Much of the fish and birdlife that once populated the state’s largest lake have decayed beyond all recognition since a sudden die off due to a climate disaster. Barnacles, fish bones, and the occasional salt encrusted bird feather have been preserved in glass and suspended in oil, followed by a dip & seal process in wax. These elixirs are shelved and on permanent display for viewing inside the steel walls of TOXIKON, which sits near the Salton Sea beach.
TOXIKON is timely – as the planet is likely to cross a critical threshold for global warming in the next decade. We’ve seen unprecedented natural disasters in recent years that scream for attention and change.
The weathered structure for this installation piece is wrapped in rusted steel that once protected Suder’s art studio in Venice Beach, California. After a long recovery from a life-changing brain injury, she was unable to make work for an extended period of time and had to stop her creative practice for a number of years. The reuse of the materials that once protected and beautified her creative space is an intentional nod to her appreciation for what continues to serve, the pain of letting go, the growth and connection she found in nature and the transcendence that comes with healing.
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9545 Avenue D, Niland, CA 92257
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ARTIST THROWS LIGHT ON GRIM HOLIDAY FOR HOMELESS
Los Angeles, CA, January 7, 2020
Knockout Photography is pleased to announce artist Kathy Sherman Suder’s latest photographic works, EVERYBODY IS SOMEBODY, addressing the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles. Suder uses photography, text, and sculpture to humanize the tens of thousands living on the streets in Los Angeles, a network of abandoned, addicted, disabled, lost, forgotten, working poor, veterans, victims and victimizers. Through her lens and the stories shared by the vulnerable community continuing to struggle in America, Suder displays with empathy and intimacy an epidemic within her community.
"Kathy Suder is not a mere observer of this show. She does not hide her camera behind a buttonhole of her coat as Walker Evans did in the 1930s. Nor does she shirk back into the shadows to safely record the scene from a distance... Suder relishes in their humanity. "
- John Rohrbach, Senior Curator of Photography, Amon Carter Museum
(from his introduction to her photographic book, UNDERGROUND)
(from his introduction to her photographic book, UNDERGROUND)
The state of California is in the midst of a catastrophic housing shortage, fighting for solutions to assist their share of more than 500,000 Americans living in homesslessness today, a quarter of whom are children. The latest White House metric records the streets of Los Angeles holding more than 58,936 homeless residents, an astounding 16 percent growth over the previous year. Suder notes:”
"It’s not a time for pointing fingers; it’s a time for coming together, for calling upon the brightest minds to find immediate and lasting solutions to this devastating housing and mental health crises that is unfathomable in the modern Western world.”
EVERYBODY IS SOMEBODY aims to bring recognition and dialogue around L.A.’s present day injustice. In the wake of the Dec. 17 New York Times’ article, Among the World’s Most Dire Places, a feature on an Oakland homeless camp, this issue has never been more topical or urgent for this state or the nation as a whole.
After spending the day with Daniel he wonders out loud as he offers to share an untouched pizza he finds in the trash can
“I wonder why people throw everything away? Maybe to help me.”
For our community members who are not offered a sense of security, Suder seeks to remind her viewers what the role of the home is when so many are not afforded this basic sense of security. New legislation is turning 15 percent of the country into outlaws for a life they cannot seem to pull themselves from. While these people sleep on the streets of every city across the country, Suder’s humanizing tour de force of the victims of this epidemic helps viewers see those affected not just as statistics but community members living in poverty and need.
“Where a cacophony of words seem to fail us in portraying the desperate needs of our neighbors, all of us are living together on one planet, the beauty of truth is that we know it when we see it.”
"After looking into the eyes of the homelessness for the past six years, I am haunted by the recognition that these are the same vacant looks as those from the extraordinary images of the WPA photographers of the 1930s taken during the Great Depression by Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans and Robert Frank, who captured an America on the verge of collapse," says Suder.
Kathy Sherman Suder’s first major series of work on boxers, KNOCKOUT, as described by The New Yorker, “owe more to Caravaggio than to Sports Illustrated” debuted in New York and marked Suder’s arrival on the U.S. art scene as an image maker of unusual emotional and visual power. The artist’s first U.S. solo museum exhibition, UNDERGROUND: Photographs by Kathy Sherman Suder was curated by John Rohrbach and opened at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in 2014 with accompanying catalog, which won awards and accolades. Her most recent installation of 100 illuminated tents and photographic works showing the face of homelessness at the Bombay Beach Biennale was reviewed in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times Magazine. Photographs by Suder have been acquired for the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Amon Carter Museum of American Art and the Pérez Art Museum Miami.
For additional images, publication rights, and story content please make inquires to the studio at suderstudio@gmail.com.
Los Angeles Times
An installation titled "Everybody Is Somebody: Ghost Camp," by Kathy Sherman Suder.
Credit: Alex Welsh for The New York Times
Kathy Suder accompanied by her partner, Timothy Potts, Director of J. Paul Getty Museum, attend "FAME" exhibition at the ESMOA Museum where her work, Get Up! from her KNOCKOUT Series, was exhibited. September, 2013
"“Get up” is my favorite painting that I own. It motivates me every day and reminds me to “get back up”. We are all knocked down every now and then…it is critical we learn how to bounce back! It is one of my most prized possessions!!!"
- Elaine A.
ARTnews
360 West Magazine
Art This Week
Kathy Suder, artist, and partner, Timothy Potts, Director of the J Paul Getty Museum, attend the InStyle Awards
Fort Worth Business Press
Star Telegram
ArtNet
Fort Worth, Texas Magazine
Dallas Observer
GlassTire
Everybody Is Somebody©