Speak Softly

Elmhurst Art Museum
Cat Chow: Speak Softly
Elmhurst, Illinois
April 19-July 13, 2008

The artist and designer Cat Chow has made a name for herself by merging fashion and art in works such as labor-in­tensive dresses made from materials like dollar bills, a single length of zipper, measuring tapes or mobile phone covers. But "Speak Softly," an exhibition of Chow's latest work, represents a new direction for the artist. "Her intricate craftsmanship transforms everyday objects into works of art that are elegantly simple, yet also complex in construction and emotional expression," writes Valerie Steele, director and chief curator of the Museum of the Fashion Institute of Technology, in the gallery guide to the show at the Elmhurst Art Museum.

The five works on display, Chow explains, stem from a "conceptual, post-minimalist ideology" that she combines with design and craft elements to seduce the viewer. She sees them not only as "poetic mediations," but as "visually compelling objects that convey deeper meanings." For instance, in 36 Chambers -a floor installation consisting of 36 two-foot-square steel cages laid out in a six-by-six-foot grid, each enclosing a glass disk entwined in twisted clear plastic wrap for a luminescent effect-Chow has softened the black lines of the metal cage by crocheting nylon horsehair-a millinery material-around them. "It's like a partially erased line drawing," she says, enjoying the paradoxical combination of hard and soft, masculine and feminine.

Metal was the first material that Chow ever worked with, and her affinity for it is evident in Ceremony, fashioned from brass chain mail, which she has formed into two necklace-like loops and hung five in a row on the wall. One interpretation is that the work represents two people in an intimate relationship. Another work suggesting relationships is Keeper, a dramatically oversized (two feet in diameter) ring or necklace in which many different size keys are joined together in a decorative pattern.

All the works in the show share Chow's obsession with repetition, pattern and accu­mulation and demonstrate her striving to make a material, once she has chosen it, her own. "I ask myself, how can I transform a material without destroying it and yet find a way to bring it closer to myself."