Kate Abercrombie, Conjuring (2017), gouache on Arches paper board, 20 × 16 inches (all images courtesy of Fleisher/Ollman Gallery)
In the exhibition, Collage as Painting: Kate Abercrombie and Trevor Winkfield, currently on view at Fleisher/Ollman Gallery, Kate Abercrombie's (MFA in Studio Art, 2011) paintings reflect the financial anxieties and desires seen in many working-class Americans today.
Conjuring suggests that perhaps occult practice will shed light on one’s financial problems. The lower half of this painting contains a Ouija board, over which is an image of the human circulatory system. Elsewhere in the painting is a set of lungs, two separate hearts, and a set of kidneys — each organ crucial to the blood. The organs suggest that the spiritualist practice will purify the blood and rid debtors of their debts. Yet this work also seems part and parcel with Abercrombie’s depictions of gambling, in the form of scratch-off tickets, pointing to risks that may cause one’s downfall. Ouija boards, for critics of spirit conjuring, are gateways to demonic possession.
Read the full Hyperallergic review here.