Kate Groobey
The Good Life
Ever Gold [Projects]
1275 Minnesota Street Suite 105, San Francisco, CA 94107
June 1 – July 1, 2017
Reception: June 3, 5-8 pm
June 1, Ever Gold [Projects] opens The Good Life, an exhibition of new work by UK-based artist Kate Groobey. In a new series of paintings and video performances, Groobey explores the notion of “the good life” through the presentation of a new set of characters and their behaviors. Her characters are active, busying themselves, trying to live their lives well. They are striving towards goals, reading books, exercising, hunting for treasures, and skinny dipping. They are healthy, wealthy enough, strong, and beautiful and have good relationships with friends, family, and lovers. But as the characters go in search of the good life, their quest is, at times, thwarted by excess, obsession, and anxiety. Groobey’s characterizations are humorous and truthful, illustrating our various attempts at self-improvement and ways we might stumble along the way.
In a series of video performances, for which she collaborated with Paris-based musician and artist Jackson and His Computerband, Groobey dresses up as the characters in her paintings. Wearing a painted costume and performing in front of a painted backdrop, she takes the place of her subject and then reenacts the moment or feeling that she captured in her watercolor paintings. The watercolors that underpin Groobey’s current body of work were made on the road. Some of the characters were created in Germany and in Big Sur, California. But it was travelling to the South of France that bore out the notion of the good life. Encountering the bleach white light of the Luberon and the joie de vivre of her French companions, Groobey found herself asking the questions: “What is the good life?”, “Am I living it?” and, if not, “What kind of activities might lead to the good life?”
Installation view, The Good Life, Kate Groobey at Ever Gold [Projects], San Francisco, 2017. Courtesy of Ever Gold [Projects].
Holding, 2017. Oil on canvas, 73h x 59w inches. Courtesy of Ever Gold [Projects].
The Good Life II, 2017. Oil on canvas, 68h x 52w inches. Courtesy of Ever Gold [Projects].
High Horse, 2017. Oil on canvas, 71h x 57w inches. Courtesy of Ever Gold [Projects].
