QUALIA
Chase Gallery
March 28, 2025 - May 17, 2025
QUALIA is an invitation for an amplified embodied sensory experience - the way it feels to “feel.” Quale (s)/ qualia(pl), defined as instance(s) of subjective conscious experience, presents a paradox: debated as something that does not exist, or conversely, be something of great neuroscientific significance. Katrin Schnabl views QUALIA as a sensory phenomenon, an inter-firing that naturally occurs without thought, yet possesses a visceral impact all its own.
Schnabl’s exhibit presents a series of sculptures and scrolls, SISTERS, along with several works from her PORTAL series, which resemble doorframes and scrolls swathed in a surface of sheer, colorful fabrics, curvilinearly stitched together, forming a dimensional unit.
EWNS (an acronym for East West North South) is a large format hanging tapestry, structured as a triptych. EWNS forms a continuous circle, split open, and experienced in three, 30-foot sections. Conjuring maps and migratory patterns over a spherical form, it is a meditation on the complementing function of our bodies’ halves: a side for fielding circular inputs, and a side for cardinal directions. Participatorily, it offers an embodied deliberation on what is embedded into many languages as the right and the left, highlighting distinctions between what is considered proper and lawful versus what is deemed less important or significant. As a visual journey across a landscape, the structure’s borders become an activation of color fields, a continuous series of neighboring contact points with varying resonances, direction, and dimension via line, texture, form, light, and movement.
Schnabl is interested in the experiential dimensions of her work. A commonality is its invitation for a somatic sensory reading; a sense-making through moving and exploring its dynamic and dimensional potential. Schnabl’s work invokes an impulse to “step inside,” as a way to process its information with the entire body, and she considers this as “yoU aRe A Work Of Art “– short URAWOA. Her offering leans into the trust the individual brings to their body as an extraordinary instrument, and Schnabl’s wish for that amplification. Photo credit: James Prinz
Click HERE for more information on gallery hours and private appointments.
QUALIA
Chase Gallery
March 28, 2025 - May 17, 2025
QUALIA is an invitation for an amplified embodied sensory experience - the way it feels to “feel.” Quale (s)/ qualia(pl), defined as instance(s) of subjective conscious experience, presents a paradox: debated as something that does not exist, or conversely, be something of great neuroscientific significance. Katrin Schnabl views QUALIA as a sensory phenomenon, an inter-firing that naturally occurs without thought, yet possesses a visceral impact all its own.
Schnabl’s exhibit presents a series of sculptures and scrolls, SISTERS, along with several works from her PORTAL series, which resemble doorframes and scrolls swathed in a surface of sheer, colorful fabrics, curvilinearly stitched together, forming a dimensional unit.
EWNS (an acronym for East West North South) is a large format hanging tapestry, structured as a triptych. EWNS forms a continuous circle, split open, and experienced in three, 30-foot sections. Conjuring maps and migratory patterns over a spherical form, it is a meditation on the complementing function of our bodies’ halves: a side for fielding circular inputs, and a side for cardinal directions. Participatorily, it offers an embodied deliberation on what is embedded into many languages as the right and the left, highlighting distinctions between what is considered proper and lawful versus what is deemed less important or significant. As a visual journey across a landscape, the structure’s borders become an activation of color fields, a continuous series of neighboring contact points with varying resonances, direction, and dimension via line, texture, form, light, and movement.
Schnabl is interested in the experiential dimensions of her work. A commonality is its invitation for a somatic sensory reading; a sense-making through moving and exploring its dynamic and dimensional potential. Schnabl’s work invokes an impulse to “step inside,” as a way to process its information with the entire body, and she considers this as “yoU aRe A Work Of Art “– short URAWOA. Her offering leans into the trust the individual brings to their body as an extraordinary instrument, and Schnabl’s wish for that amplification. Photo credit: James Prinz
Click HERE for more information on gallery hours and private appointments.
Chicago-based artist Katrin Schnabl’s practice spans various disciplines that include visual art, sculpture, fashion, dance, performance and installation, fusing movement, pattern and conceptual investigation. She creates dimensional installations and sculptures with chroma-tinted sheer stitched fabrics, dynamically engaging the viewer to explore the body’s spatial awareness and activate the senses. Schnabl continues to collaborate with and contribute to numerous acclaimed dance and performance projects, which deeply informs her distinct approach. Schnabl studied Dance in Frankfurt, and Fashion Design at FIT, NYC. Since launching her first collection in NY in the 1990’s she has expanded her visual, spatial, and kinetic practice with fashion in an ever-expanding context through movement activated capsule collections, installations, and curated experiences. In 2004, she followed an invitation to teach at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Throughout her creative trajectory she engages sustainability, conceptually and pragmatically, such as her work with repurposing discarded plastic. Recently her work was included in New American Painting, shown at Pan American Art Projects in Miami; featured on stage with scenic and costume design for the San Francisco Ballet, as well as featured in two solo exhibitions in Chicago, and at Devening Projects in the exhibition EVERSO with Jodi Hays.
Chicago-based artist Katrin Schnabl’s practice spans various disciplines that include visual art, sculpture, fashion, dance, performance and installation, fusing movement, pattern and conceptual investigation. She creates dimensional installations and sculptures with chroma-tinted sheer stitched fabrics, dynamically engaging the viewer to explore the body’s spatial awareness and activate the senses. Schnabl continues to collaborate with and contribute to numerous acclaimed dance and performance projects, which deeply informs her distinct approach. Schnabl studied Dance in Frankfurt, and Fashion Design at FIT, NYC. Since launching her first collection in NY in the 1990’s she has expanded her visual, spatial, and kinetic practice with fashion in an ever-expanding context through movement activated capsule collections, installations, and curated experiences. In 2004, she followed an invitation to teach at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Throughout her creative trajectory she engages sustainability, conceptually and pragmatically, such as her work with repurposing discarded plastic. Recently her work was included in New American Painting, shown at Pan American Art Projects in Miami; featured on stage with scenic and costume design for the San Francisco Ballet, as well as featured in two solo exhibitions in Chicago, and at Devening Projects in the exhibition EVERSO with Jodi Hays.
