Swallowed Into the Soft Underbelly
April 2 - May 1, 2022

Opening Reception Saturday, April 2 from 1-6 pm 

Underbelly of the Beast, Arcade Project, Charlene Stevens and Roman Kalinovski, May 2022

Kat Ryals and Kate Stone: Swallowed Into the Soft Underbelly at Ortega y Gasset Projects, White Hot Magazine, Ana Maria Farina, April 2022

ARTISTS KAT RYALS AND KATE STONE INVESTIGATE PSYCHOLOGY OF INTERIOR SPACES IN NEW IMMERSIVE EXHIBITION

Brooklyn, NY (March 14, 2022)—Ortega y Gasset Projects is pleased to announce its upcoming exhibition Swallowed Into the Soft Underbelly, an immersive installation by artists Kat Ryals and Kate Stone exploring the psychology of the interior spaces we inhabit. Opening April 2, 2022, and running through May 1, 2022, the exhibition features new sculptural and image-based work that considers how human life is inadvertently indexed in spaces through accumulation, intervention, and evolution over time.

Kat Ryals’ custom plush rugs—designed by assembling and photographing both organic and manufactured detritus—will be installed in conversation with Kate Stone’s animations and photographs of the interior spaces of meticulously crafted miniature sets, as well as Stone’s carpet sculptures. These fantasy worlds collide to reveal the ‘muck’ that underlies the veneer of each.

“By pairing these two exceptional bodies of work,” says curators Clare Britt and Tiffany Smith, “we meld Ryals’ fascination with the decorative exterior surface of the consumer world with the intimate, interior domestic world at the core of Stone’s, highlighting how each artist’s work distorts perceptions of authenticity vs. artificiality, luxury vs. austerity, and the transition from pre-consumer to post-consumer in furniture, decor, and design.”

Artist Bios

Originally from Little Rock, Arkansas, Kat Ryals (b. 1988) is a Brooklyn-based artist, curator, and photographer. Ryals received a BFA in Photography from Savannah College of Art and Design and a MFA in Photography & Adv. Certificate in Museum Education from Brooklyn College. She has shown her work nationally, including in a solo booth at SPRING/BREAK Art Show in 2020, and in recent group exhibitions with ChaShaMa, Ortega Y Gasset Projects, and The Wassaic Project. She has also completed several artist residencies, including the Wassaic Project, ChaNorth, Peter Bullough Foundation, and a Fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center. She is the Cofounder of the arts platform, Paradice Palase, based out of Bushwick, Brooklyn and the Curator of Art at Manhattan nightlife and culture venue House of X at PUBLIC. In recent years, she has been pursuing an interdisciplinary approach to her artistic practice where she creates lens based and digital works, 3D objects, wearables, and installations. Her work examines how manmade power is created through means of myth, spectacle, ornamentation, illusion, and assigned value and her projects are often influenced by her Cajun roots and Catholic upbringing. 

Kate Stone is a Brooklyn-based artist working across photography, sculpture, installation and animation. Her work explores the domestic uncanny and the narratives embedded in everyday architectural structures. Kate received a BA from Bard College and an MFA from Parsons the New School for Design. She has been awarded the Tierney Fellowship, The Lotos Foundation Prize and an FST StudioProjects Grant. Her self-published book, “How We End,” was shortlisted for the Aperture Foundation Photobook Awards. She has attended residencies at NARS Foundation, Artists Alliance LES Studio Program and Mudhouse Residency in rural Greece. Her work has been exhibited at 601Artspace, bitforms gallery, Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space, Dinner Gallery, FiveMyles, Rubber Factory, Spring Break Art Show, South Bend Museum of Art, The Museum of Broken Relationships and Transmitter Gallery, among others.

Curator Bios

Clare Britt (she/her) joined OyG Projects in 2013 as a founding co-director. She curated the first solo exhibition of photographic work with Chicago artist Kelly Kaczynski Yes; Or As If. She co curated the group exhibition Code Switch with co-director Lauren Whearty, curated the group show Shadow of the Gradient, and co curated the exhibition entitled Apparitions with artist Alicia Smith and co-director Eleanna Anagnos. Clare has been instrumental in creating virtual content for the gallery including starting the YouTube Channel and creating content for the virtual space.  She spearheaded Rendezvous, an interactive virtual experience that serves as a platform for creative exchange between artists with co-director Tiffany Smith. Clare interviews artists in the Flat File Program in a casual studio visit on Friday’s on OyG’s Instagram Live channel. Clare is a freelance photographer and lives in Chicago, IL and works all over the country creating art and NFTs and telling stories of the people she encounters along the way.

Tiffany Smith (she/her) is an Interdisciplinary artist from the Caribbean diaspora working between photography, video, installation, and design to define spaces and experiences that oscillate between the roles of visitor and native and parse the definition of home. She teaches photography at Pratt, Parsons, and FIT and is currently a Bronx AIM Alumni resident at the Bronx Museum. Tiffany joined OyG in 2019, curated Becoming Buoyant in 2021 and has been instrumental in creating virtual content and programming for the gallery, partnering with co-director Clare Britt to produce programs such as Black Equity and Rendezvous that serve as platforms for creative exchange and a source of community support between artists. She is passionate about working with others to create strategies that contribute to building better futures for artists and creatives.