Solo Show: "Jumping From Trains" at Arts and Literature Lab in Madison, WI

What: Jumping From Trains a Solo Exhibition of Interdisciplinary Artwork by Rebecca Kautz 
Show Title: Jumping From Trains
When: July 9th-August 30th, 2024, Opening Reception Friday, July 19th, 2024 from 6-8pm
Where: Arts and Literature Lab, 111 S. Livingston Street, Suite 100, Madison, WI. 53703
Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Friday 10-5pm and Saturdays from 12pm-5pm.

artlitlab.org/events/rebecca-kautz-jumping-from-trains
 
Brief Excerpt:
Jumping From Trains is an exhibition of the interdisciplinary artworks of Rebecca Kautz.  Incorporating durational site specific performance, painting, and sculptural practices the artist explores the multiple approaches to reckoning with issues of the heart and mind. Making works in response to mental states, cultural events, activism, or simply to create a lasting sentiment. This creative collection rather than a strict singular vision,  elevates the process and value of tangents, multiplicity, and exploration.  Jumping from Trains signals the erratic, potentially hazardous endeavor of switching directions or choosing another path.
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Exhibition Statement:
 
Jumping From Trains implies a compulsion to change direction, to abandon a path for a new way. I was awaken at night by the sound of a train passing through town and was immediately transported to my childhood bedroom.  This was a common sound heard at night growing up in rural Illinois.  Cultural theorist, Bell Hooks describes this same experience of train whistles bringing her back to childhood  in her essay titled “Habits of the Heart” in “Belonging: A Culture of place”. Hooks describes being a child awaken in the night by the sound of trains -setting her mind to wonder about all the places she might go as she grew.  For me leaving home, jumping on a train in search of somewhere better-somewhere to belong , was all I wanted to do.  At 17, I ran away on a one way train to Texas with no return ticket or plan for when I arrived there. Still now I am searching. Incorporating durational site specific performance, painting, and sculptural practices I explore the multiple approaches to reckoning with issues of the heart and mind. Making works in response to mental states, cultural events, activism, or simply to create a lasting sentiment as evidence that I was here. This creative collection rather than a strict singular vision,  elevates the process and value of tangents, multiplicity, and exploration.  ‘Drawing a blank’ or losing your  ‘train of thought’ occurs when thinking is derailed, generally if an obstacle or distraction crosses the mind or eye.  Jumping from Trains signals the erratic, potentially hazardous endeavor of switching directions or choosing another path. Hooks ends her essay with “where I began is also where I will end”.  When we seemingly lose ourselves in the directions or distance we go, there is a path to return to ourselves. 
 

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Images: Top: Awakened By Night Trains, 20x24inches, acrylic on canvas (2024), Image Bottom: Shame Project/Genius Patch:Distress Signal, durational performance(artifact), 2018-2020