May 12–July 28 , 2007

Houston, TX, May 2007 – Blaffer Gallery is pleased to present A Thing Called Early Blur, Katrina Moorhead's first solo exhibition in an American museum. Following on the heels of a residency in Reykjavik , Iceland , the exhibition presents new drawings, objects, and a room-size installation made in response to Iceland 's powerfully unique natural and cultural landscape. A Thing Called Early Blur captures the essence of Moorhead 's experiences of this particular island locale as it relates to her ongoing artistic investigation into cultural appropriation, conditioning, and mediation of all things natural as manifested in the world of objects.

For Moorhead, her Iceland stay brought into focus the geological, meteorological, and economic particularities of island existence, but also, more importantly, the attendant physical, psychological, and emotional conditions. Born and raised in Northern Ireland , Moorhead is no stranger to island life. In fact, this theme has figured, literally as well as metaphorically, in previous work, whether as a geographical unit around which to redraw her three-dimensional rendering of the international dateline or as the title of an installation that lyrically evokes a better time and place in a world turned upside-down to become more in tune with the natural world.

In A Thing Called Early Blur, the island figures less as a geographic or philosophical concept than as a concrete reality. Moorhead 's Icelandic mystique is one of nature and nightlife, both of which are the driving forces behind Iceland 's current status as one of the most popular tourist destinations within as well as beyond Europe . With titles such as Moon Huge And Low And Does Not Leave (2007) and Horizontal Waterfall After T.H. (or How You Lost Your Loveliness) (2007), the works created for this exhibition engage Iceland 's natural landscape and urban scene, revealing beauty and authenticity in both as they throw each other into sharp relief. Glaciers and multiple moons find their way into drawings, an artificial waterfall made of sequins flows along the walls, while sheetrock is transformed into a precarious environment animated by lights that evoke both day- and nighttime.

The title of the exhibition itself plays with another Icelandic myth, that of atmosphere-induced hallucination. In the Icelandic imagination, the island is host to many a spirit being, and its dry and cold climate, with days turned night and nights turned day, fosters many a sensory illusion. Records of hallucinations can be found in a number of travelogues, and Moorhead 's oblique invocation of the phenomenon seems particularly apt for an exhibition that so clearly deals with the spell of this island nation.

Employing a broad range of conceptual and material strategies, Moorhead ponders and probes notions of authenticity, truth, and beauty, whether in tracing the natural in the artificial or suggesting nature with artifacts. Resolution, rather than critique, is at the core of Moorhead 's enterprise. Hers is a conciliatory stance that seeks to lay bare our compromised relationship to the natural world in order to heighten our awareness of, and create a fresh appetite and appreciation for, that world. Her desire for the natural is sincere, but Moorhead's own doubts vis-à-vis a lasting and su cc essful return to the experiential real and her refined sense of humor are imprinted in her work as much as the romantic impulse that drives it. Her romanticism, if one were to call it that, is not the nostalgic kind, but one broken by realism and translated into a proactive stance that, while at times melancholy, is firmly rooted in the present, engaging the past only as a means to better prepare for the future. Delicate and seemingly ephemeral, hers is a visual poetry of fragility and temporariness that mirrors the vulnerability of her propositions while exploring the intersection and interpenetration of the natural and cultural realms.

Katrina Moorhead: A Thing Called Early Blur is organized by Claudia Schmuckli, Curator, Blaffer Gallery, and will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue. The exhibition is made possible in part by generous contributions from Houston Endowment Inc. and The Visionary Initiatives Fund: Vicky and Don Eastveld, Miranda and Dan Wainberg. Additional support is provided by the Peter Norton Family Foundation, Linda Pace Foundation, Gretchen and Andrew McFarland, Beverly and Howard Robinson, Emily and Alton Steiner, Cecily E. Horton, and Inman Gallery, Houston.