Perfect Pototoes
Perfect potatoes, video performance, 18:38 mins

Installation view, Perfect Potatoes, Redling Fine Art, Los Angeles, 2016
"There’s nothing quite so perfect as potatoes
there’s nothing quite so perfect as potatoes
there’s nothing quite so perfect as potatoes
potatoes, perfect potatoes, potatoes, potatoes."
Characters based on the people closest to her populate Kate Groobey’s paintings and videos. She observes the strategies and mechanisms friends and family employ to cope with their own bodies, careers, relationships, and mortality. Through the creation of her work she embodies these characters, trying on their personas and presenting stylized versions of their survival mechanisms. The lyrics presented above come from one such strategy, a song written by Groobey’s father and niece.
Although the paintings are based on the artist’s experience of others, Groobey herself is always present in the work, not only through the emotive brushwork but the traces of her footprints.
The presence of the artist is taken further in Groobey’s video work as she literally becomes the painted characters, bringing them to life with dance and movement. For these short films the artist has created costumes and backdrops that are based faithfully on her paintings. The abbreviated soundtracks come from a collaboration with the Paris-based DJ Jackson and his Computer Band.
Erica Redling, Redling Fine Art, 2016

Perfect Potatoes, oil on canvas, 162 x 130 cm, 2016

Militant, oil on canvas, 150 x 150 cm, 2016

The Perfect Queen, oil on canvas, 162 x 130 cm, 2016

Panic, oil on canvas, 162 x 130 cm, 2016

I hate everything man, oil on canvas, 162 x 114 cm, 2016

Jiggle woman, oil on canvas, 162 x 130 cm, 2016

Grab it, oil on canvas, 162 x 130 cm, 2016

Inner peas, oil on canvas, 162 x 130 cm, 2016

Militant moon worshippers, oil on canvas, 150 x 120 cm, 2016

Gold gold gold, oil on canvas, 185 x 135 cm, 2016

Installation view, Perfect Potatoes, video projection, Redling Fine Art, Los Angeles,2016

Installation view, Perfect Potatoes, Redling Fine Art, Los Angeles, 2016