Blind waiting

Two works by Californian artist Katherine Zsolt, who seems to live in a world populated by bodies.


Looking at the first image, I am brought back to how dead bodies would crop up inexplicably across my childhood dreams: walk into a room and trip over a fresh corpse; open a drawer and pull out a bleeding head; wake up among a pile of the dead, to find that you are one of them too. Zsolt strands the bed in the middle of a black lake. You know this is the kind of water that will drag you down by the head, and so you helplessly lie put under the covers while dead bodies grow numerous in the space around you.

The second image is also a body, but then I look again and I don't know what lies draped under there. The form is broken and askew. It is a man who has dropped his head into the other part of the draped sack? A neck in between that has been stretched out until it is the neck of an embryonic bird? A neckless man touching a bowling ball with the amputated club of his arm? I don't know, but this piece is called "Waiting" and for me it captures that feeling when you are waiting... and waiting... and bit by bit the hope drains out of you, until every part of you sags with disappointment.