LAURIE’S WORK
by Shannon Mullen O’Keefe
Laurie Victor Kay’s work invites us into chance with purpose.
Or is it to find purpose by chance?
As we regard her multi-disciplinary creations we find ourselves asking:
“What is (im)possible about the color blue?”
This is because blue becomes something rather ethereal through her lens.
Ciel Bleu Sifnos
In her view it isn’t only blue.
It is blue through repetitions, waves, compositions and meditations.
She demands to know more of it. She asks the same of us.
Each of her creations is a provocation that invites deeper consideration.
Composition Blue Wave
The unrestricted choreography of each moment matters in her work. The happenstance, the coincidence of colors that might only coexist together once, in our lifetime (or in anyone’s lifetime) as two strangers pass one another on the staircase of The Louvre, for example.
Steps, Louvre
The strangers pass without speaking. They’ll never know they’ve spoken to us through her work.
It is in this way that her work speaks to us about the (organic) infrastructure all around us.
Composition IV Le Temps Suspendu
The trees.
The sea.
The sky.
Les Chaises Jaunes II
The underground.
Walls.
Rooms.
The metro.
Les Chaises Bleues III 2022
Blue Number 21
So it isn’t only what is impossible about the color blue, that we begin to wonder about. It’s also what is (im)possible now?
What is (im)possible about us?
Altogether her collection of works forms a fabric, woven together with a thread–that is not symmetrical, or perfect, (but almost.)
Because Kay’s work is about how perfection is(nt.)
It is about what is (un)real. It is about what is (un)realistic.
It is about what we almost see.
Football II Bangkok
It is about the standards we hold ourselves to and it is about what might be falling apart.
What might be peeling away.
We begin to visualize the fragments around us. The fragments within us.
We begin to see that what we thought was nothing –might actually be a human being.
This is as the layers become soccer players before our eyes.
Or, as the room becomes a kaleidoscope–an (un)real or, rather (sur)real space to inhabit.
Is it real?
Les Chaises Bleues II
Les Chaises Bleues
This Wrinkle Crème is French
Butterfly Blues 2023
It is about the apothecary, anxiety, society, beauty and graffiti. And about how all of that somehow represents–us. The deconstructed parts of us, the layers of us, the things we internalize and our handwriting on the walls.
It is about what we are trying to say (to each other.)
In the end, what is (im)possible about the color blue may be that we not only see the blues, but as human beings, we feel the blues.
And that is what matters about her work. It invites us to reconsider the chance we have to find our purpose.
Ciel Bleu Italia