Kate Casanova’s hyper-tactile sculptures evoke the paradoxical experience of being a body. One can know their own body intimately and yet the inner workings remain utterly mysterious. Organs carry out tasks beneath flesh and microbes flourish in guts without direction from the human in which they inhabit. Even though science provides brilliant explanations of how we function, to occupy a body is to be both at home and amidst an alien landscape.

Utilizing a wide range of materials - including paper clay, polymer gypsum, vintage fur, fabric and acrylic paint - Casanova creates abstract sculptures that evoke a definition of a body that defies easy categorization. Biomorphic forms - like an unruly intestine or spleen - bulge and coil in defiance of gravity. Sensuous fabrics with pore-like holes are layered over protruding fur. This is a body that is in process and lacks a distinct outside and inside. This hyper-tactility is an invitation to engage the knowledge that resides in the senses and in the materiality of the body. Gut Feeling occupies the space between what can be sensed about one’s own body and what can only be imagined.