Catherine Biocca
Catherine Biocca is introduced by I: project space.
Catherine Biocca (born 1984 in Rome), studied at the Düsseldorf Academy and Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam.
Exhibitions (selection): on display, basis e.V., Frankfurt a. M., DE, 2015 (solo); Void: there´s nothing more left, but a little trace from human being, Ginko Space, Beijing, CN, 2015; Asphalt Paintings, Strabag Art Forum, Vienna, AT, 2016 (solo); Discrete Justice, PSM Gallery, Berlin, DE, 2016 and What People do for Money: Some Joint Ventures, Manifesta 11, Zurich, CH, (upcoming). She lives and works in Amsterdam and Berlin.
In her work, Catherine Biocca merges different levels of dimensions, reversing and swapping diverse media to generate an unfamiliar reality.
The result is a mix of bi- and tri-dimensional elements dealing with displacement, layered with cartoonish imagery and details from science fiction, and boasting a view on human brutality throughout our cultural history. The characters in her works call to mind cartoons or animated figures that are embedded in uncomplicated events and simple settings, burdened by the comic brutality inherent to their existence. Biocca stretches the moment of recognition to absurd lengths, questioning why we accept violence as a form of entertainment.
“Schadenfreude” – an untranslatable German term for the pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others – forms the basis of her research. Exploiting an unprocessed and raw form to question a rather violent – and yet tremendously entertaining – side of life, Biocca understands art as a tool to reveal the emptiness and nonsense of life as its only real sense. The violence Biocca exhibits is nevertheless treated with so much humour and wit that one cannot but happily embrace her cruel universe with guilty pleasure.
The low-fi character of her work occupies a wide variety of media, ranging from drawings made with industrial markers on waxed cloth to computer animations, and from space-filling installations made of tape and pvc to lazer drawing on styrofoam.