Professor Kristen Letts Kovak is one of the featured artists in the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh’s “2022-2023 Featured Artists Exhibition.” The show is on view at their exhibition space in Lawrenceville from March 4 through April 15.
Kovak’s current series, “Out of Order,” investigates precarious states of visual resolution. She deliberately resists clarity and shifts images into a state of disarrangement. These paintings inhabit worlds where the mystical co-exists with the explainable and a sense of familiarity lingers in the abstract. While she begins with a clear intention, she deliberately misorders her own plans, and welcomes unexplained subluxations and disruptions. The paintings convey so many contradictory points of focus that realities become intertwined and individual signification is lost. The final images are a chance-medley of visceral sensations and unsettled realities. She aims for the space between resolution and interruption, knowing that the present is equal parts hypothetical and reactive.