Katy SchimertOedipus Rex: The Drowned Man

How do we know what we know? Are maps, metaphors, and myths the right tools for the job, especially when it comes to love and the unconscious? For New York based sculptor and filmmaker, Katy Schimert, it doesn’t really matter since these are the only tools we have. Taken as a whole, her work which includes love letters, short films, ceramic sculptures and mixed media drawings, represents a nostalgia for master narratives. The sticky sweet birth of tragedy in scratchy Technicolor, thick clay metaphors, the inexplicable yet symbolic charm of shiny things and a world capable of being explained with tin foil, string, and masking tape; Schimert’s expressiveness is a quirky capitulation to an age which is information rich yet emotionally redundant. For her exhibition at The Society, Schimert has chosen to focus on the figure of Oedipus, the archetype of Greek tragedy whom we understand primarily through strains of 19th century Romantic and intellectual thought culminating in Freud. Schimert, however, confounds Freud’s fixation with Oedipus by adopting the point of view of Antigone, Oedipus’ daughter/sister.