The Brooklyn-based painter Keltie Ferris is known for her spray-painted, layered, and pixelated abstract paintings. She recently shifted away from this style to focus on her body prints, which are currently on view at Mitchell-Innes & Nash in an exhibition titled M\A\R\C\H.
In these works she literally covers herself in oil and pigment and lies on top of a human-sized sheet of paper. Depending on the print, the designs either obscure or highlight the artist’s gender. “I’ve always been looking for some sort of extremely indexical ‘I am here’ mark to put into my paintings,” she said.
Ferris and I discussed her work in M\A\R\C\H and how she used her body not only as a tool, but to political effect by building an army of bodies.
