Kato Six on her first major solo exhibition at M

For at least a decade, Kato Six has been building a versatile and idiosyncratic body of work. Last year, her work was already on show as part of the group exhibition 'The Constant Glitch' and from 14 October, she will have her first major solo exhibition at M.

I hope I can teach people to see things differently

Kato Six

I am very happy about that. There are many young Belgian artists making interesting work and so that M invited me feels great. I show new pieces there, such as carpets, but also works from the past five or six years. For that, I started looking back, and that was sometimes quite surprising. For example, in my notes from a few years ago, I found out that I was already toying with the idea of making carpets when in fact I thought it was a fairly recent thought."

"The exhibition also includes a publication on my oeuvre to date. We are working hard on it, together with the writers and the designers. It is so good to see all the work from the past few years come together in a book."

A lot of artists suffered during the pandemic. M collaborated with Cera and the City of Leuven to buy works to support them and set up the exhibition 'The Constant Glitch' together with them. You were one of those artists.

"In addition to my artistic practice, I also do freelance work including building exhibitions. The pandemic put a stop to all of that. I saw that fellow artists were struggling too, and I addressed that on social media. I was very happy that M stepped into the breach with 'The Constant Glitch'. Not only because of the ﬁnancial support, but also because it gave my work and that of others more visibility."

Rhythmically ticking knitting needles

How would you yourself describe your work?

"It's quite formal - I often start from forms and materials from our everyday environment, which I then place in a different context. I never really tell a story, but make abstract references to objects and materials that are often part of our collective memory. One material, for example, that I have already worked with a few times is Formica. It used to be widely used for table tops and school desks and usually had an edge of a typical black border. I use that edge in my work too. At the same time, Formica is a material that often recurs in recent art history. Artists like Richard Artschwager used it a lot in the 1960s."

"I regularly work with artiﬁcial materials that seek to imitate natural materials. They pretend to be something they are not. Formica, for example, often has a stone or wood design, but it is 100% plastic. On Formica's website, it is in fact a brand name, they have the slogan 'Bring nature to your home'. The names of their products are also along the same lines: Volcano, Aqua, Rosemary... That weird, twisted relationship with nature fascinates me. Apparently, we like having nature around us, but preferably a synthetic imitation of it. Solid surface is another such synthetic material. It is widely used for kitchen countertops, where it is made to look like a stone surface. I used it to make the work 'Spinning Lines, Twisting Thoughts', which will also be shown at M."

"Or take that marble patterned plastic you can buy in rolls at DIY shops. They often used to stick that on the inside of drawers, but I use it to cover sculptural volumes. That wat I give that ugly material something of its value back. It is another reference back to real marble. At the same time, that association with old drawers is still there."

Several of your works refer to textiles. Yet you waited until very recently actually to start working with textiles.

"I grew up with textiles, and I have many memories of them: spools of wool lying around the house, the rhythmic ticking of knitting needles, the sound of the pedal of the spinning wheel... Yet I avoided making textile work myself for a long time, perhaps precisely because it was so present. A few years ago, I started a series of detailed pencil drawings of knitting and crochet patterns - 'Striped Knitwear' and 'Crochet Series'. Doing that was very labour-intensive and repetitive. The scratching sound of the pencil on the paper alone almost had something meditative about it. Of course, there is that repetitive and meditative aspect when you knit or crochet. That's precisely what I wanted to capture in those drawings."

"I ended up working with textiles towards the end of 2021: I made a series of tapestries for the 50th anniversary of the Flemish Parliament. They are now part of the permanent collection there. For the exhibition at M, I am now tufting a series of six large carpets - using a tufting gun to shoot threads along the back through a stretched canvas. My first idea was to have the carpets woven, but that was a bit pricey, so that's how I ended up with tufting. I watched ﬁlms about it on YouTube, and it seemed doable. The act itself again has that repetitiveness and physicality."

"The same motif returns on all the carpets, a line drawing in which you can recognise a carpet beater. It looks slightly different on each carpet. It is a very recognisable motif, but it can also remain an abstract form. The carpet beater also loses its function, it is not as if you can use it to knock out the carpet when it is woven into that same carpet (laughs)."

"Those carpets are but a snapshot of my art practice, though. I don't necessarily want to make many more carpets. I am interested in the material aspect of textiles, but that does not mean that the result has to be a textile work."

Still lifes in 3D

Your works were once described as three-dimensional still lifes, installations based on images of remembrance. They are a distant echo of utilitarian objects, often from the domestic world. How do you get from such a memory to a work of art?

"Remembrance" may not be the right word - I see it more as recognition. I use shapes and materials that the viewer recognises which gives them an intuitive connection. If you do not do that, then the viewer does not have an anchor point. But at the same time, something important has been lost, for that carpet beater, for example, its function. This makes the viewer more aware of the materiality of such an everyday object. I am even okay if the viewer does not recognise anything in it, but likes the work on an abstract level. Many of my works are quite aesthetic. I am not afraid of beauty."

"As for that domestic aspect: that is much broader than just things you have in your house. It is more about how we feel at home with the shapes and materials that surround us. Although my knitting and crochet drawings do refer to activities that usually happen indoors, often done by women."

"'Background Hum: Outer Hebrides' could be seen at 'The Constant Glitch' at M. A diamond-shaped volume that I covered with wallpaper with the motif of a mountain landscape. It will also be on display during my solo exhibition. In that work, I as it were look from the inside - the wallpaper - to the outside - the landscape. The work asks questions about how we see, about how we relate to space and the other way around: what is foreground and what is background, and do these categories actually exist?"

"When I made the work, I mainly asked myself ‘how do we experience a landscape, and what is a landscape anyway - is it something real, or is it a construction in our heads?’ My grandparents' bedroom used to have wallpaper with a motif of a mountain landscape. So for a long time, when I thought of 'mountains', I thought of that wallpaper. When I first visited the mountains in real life much later, it was an overwhelming experience, but at the same time I realised I couldn't possibly take that experience with me. 'Background Hum' was an attempt somehow to capture them anyway. In a light, I think even humorous way. There is humour in my work, although it doesn't always very obvious (laughs)."

Start looking differently

Your works have a special relationship with space: they lie directly on the ground, without a pedestal, and lean against the wall or even a radiator. What do you want to achieve with that?

"In M, I show my carpets back-to-back on large support structures. This is the first time I have exhibited in such a large museum hall. Up until now, my work has mostly been shown in smaller project spaces and galleries. I usually then look for the margins of the space: how does my work relate to details like a socket, a radiator... For me, this is a way of putting the status of the work into perspective, to take it off its proverbial pedestal. In a larger space, I find that less obvious, but again, those are the details that I'm going to look for to see if I can use odd angles in the space."

"Just then, you compared my work to still lifes. There is something in that. It sometimes seems staged, and it also refers to everyday life. But they are still lifes in 3D. The spectator can move closer, step back, walk around... That movement is important, it adds meaning. In particular in my later work, the older pieces are a bit more static."

You do often play with the tension between 2D and 3D.

"I in fact see all my work as 3D. Take those knitting drawings: there is depth in them, lines running over and under each other... You also experience those drawings differently when you look at them from a different angle."

"I make dust pieces too, fabric works so to speak. The dust comes from materials like MDF, pressed wood fibres. I treat those with a sander, and direct the dust particles through the machine towards a wall. Static electricity makes them stick to that wall, and using stencils, I then create patterns and geometric shapes with them. A drawing like that looks flat, but to me that is a 3D work. A dust particle has three dimensions. It is the smallest possible shape of the material I am working with, so in this case MDF. At the same time, a work like that evokes another work that I have not made, but could have made. It is as it were the shadow of that non-existent work, a poetic idea."

"I always depart from the material, the making process, my body too, not from a theory or a concept. That may be why I find it difficult to put what my work is about exactly into words. If I could speak about it fluently, I would probably make different kind of work (laughs)."

"My work is often labour-intensive. I don't like to outsource anything, and when I do, I sometimes have less afﬁnity with it. The physical is an important aspect in my work. I made several works from of thick bundles of ropes with lots of loops and knots. Those ropes are very heavy, you really have to tug on them to get movement. I find it interesting to consider how my body contributes to the creation of a work, and what the material itself does or allows me to do. That also makes my work sensitive."

What should visitors expect from your exhibition? Is there a particular experience that you would like them to have?

"When they step out of the exhibition, I hope they pay more attention to seemingly insignificant details, to recurring patterns, to the idea that a space changes according to the way you move around in it. That they start looking at space with different eyes."

Who is Kato Six?

Kato Six (°1986) was born in Bruges. She studied graphic design and obtained a master's degree in multimedia design at KASK in Ghent. She lived successively in Berlin, Amsterdam and Brussels.

In 2012, she was artist-in-residence at WIELS. Since then, she did several other residencies, exhibited in galleries and participated in group exhibitions. Her work can be found in several collections. In M, she will have her first major solo exhibition.