Katherine Tau-Lan Mann, Cauldron 2, Acrylic and Sumi Ink on Paper, 62.5 x 65.5 in.
Mann’s paintings show how patterned, highly-wrought, decorative elements coalesce from the chaos and contingency of an organic environment--and how they dissolve into that environment once again. The artist begins each piece with a stain of color, the product of chance evaporation of ink and water from the paper as it lies on the floor of the studio. From this shape, she nourishes the landscape of each painting, coaxing from this organic foundation the development of diverse, decorative forms: braids of hair, details from Beijing opera costuming, lattice-work, sequined patterns. Although founded in adornment, these elements are repeated until they too appear organic and highlight the underlying ink-stained foundation. Each piece is tense with the threat of disunity and incoherence as nature and artifice spring from and merge into one another, and as different elements multiply and expand like poisonous growths. Mann’s paintings are utter hybrids; man-sized fields punctuated by moments of absurdity, poetry, mutation, growth and decay that are both suffocating and fabulous. They glory in the sensuous and the rambling, but intersperse the chaos with moments of neurotic control. They explore the potentialities of growth, but also of overabundance. Mann thinks of her work as “Baroque Abstract”: a celebration of the abundance of connections and clashes that can be found in the disparate mess of matter in the world.