CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 9/18/2019

Metaphysical immensity in 'Kathy Butterly: ColorForm'

How we love this new, clothbound monograph on the American sculptor and ceramicist Kathy Butterly. Featuring roughly 80 works, all under 16 inches around and made 1989–2019, with an emphasis on more recent work, it proves without a doubt that monumentality has nothing to do with size. Editor Dan Nadel writes, "A small object executed with curiosity and finesse can appear metaphysically immense, allowing a viewer to encounter its totality from all angles, inside and out. But the object must first have a near-human presence in space and pull the viewer in with recognizable or intriguing details." Heavy Head (2003), for example, measures just 3 3/8 x 6 x 3 3/4 inches. On Philip Guston's recent influence, Nadel quotes Butterly: "He painted his later representational imagery so that they feel alive: a shoe, a cigarette, a book. My desire is to get my works to a place where they have meaning, have presence and evoke the sense of being alive."