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To Hide the Absurd in Elegance

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To Hide the Absurd in Elegance

By Bruce Chao
Cacao Magazine (Taiwan), July 2011

New York – typical place of capitalism, center of contemporary mainstream culture and a metropolis that assembles all popular desires. At the same time, it is the origin of fast-food culture. It brought about the excesses in consumer behavior, so many of the consumer products that pop up everywhere like mushrooms, will not escape the fate of being chucked out. The Kitsch Culture that these products represent has become the focus of New York artist Beth Katleman. She incorporates the relationship between consumer goods and society, giving those gone-to- waste products the gift of new life in her lay-back art that resembles a sense of Rococo. This art, in which she plays with the estrangements of symbols, exists on the edges of popular culture, high end.

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