Karma is pleased to present works by two gallery artists: Woody De Othello and Paul Mogensen.

Woody De Othello (b. 1991) is a Berkeley-based artist whose ceramics anthropomorphize common household objects and abstract the figure into seemingly animated forms. The works exhibited use sinuous configurations to explore vocabularies of knots, twisting the hierarchy of his ostensible subjects such that each figure achieves a new identity. The largest work here, Finding A Way, subverts the classical vocabulary of sculptural busts and supports, balancing a snaking line on a globular head supported by a ceramic manqué of a rickety stool. A trio of intimate works, Listening, Searching, and Telling Time, were conceived as scale models for a public art proposal. Each sculpture appears caught in an act—a finger dialing a telephone, a hand holding a lightbulb, an arm wearing a watch—interacting with and challenging our perceptions of their functions.

Paul Mogensen (b. 1941) is a key contributor to what became known as minimalist painting, offering a concise rationale and methodology for his lushly painted work, which explores the subtleties of color as it performs in space. Karma is exhibiting both current and historic work by Mogensen, who first arrived in New York in 1967 under the auspices of the Bykert Gallery, where he exhibited for eight years, often alongside his peers, Brice Marden and David Novros. Mogensen’s work is based on the adoption of rules guided by elemental mathematics derived from antiquity, developed in the Renaissance, and long used in music and architecture, as exemplified by his interest in the golden ratio. He remains an active, New York-based artist.