Signed and Numbered

Composition PM/XX, 2020 is a new work by artist Barbara Kasten. Soft shadows and reflections are created by the careful staging and layering of vividly colored translucent acrylics. The artist’s interplay between three dimensionality and flatness is an important element in her process of photographic abstraction. The edition comes with a generous mat—a framed point of entry into another world—which Kasten describes as “a little jewel-box”, furthering her interest in perception and scale.

Barbara Kasten was born in 1936 in Chicago, Illinois. Her work explores abstraction, materiality, architecture, and the interaction of light and shadow through photographic and installation works. Kasten’s most recent work is on view in a major solo exhibition at the Aspen Art Museum through April 2021. Also this year, she had a comprehensive solo exhibition at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany which was accompanied by a new publication. In 2015, a survey of Kasten’s work was presented at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, and travelled to the Graham Foundation in Chicago and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. Her work is featured in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate Modern in London, Whitney Museum of American Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Guggenheim Museum in New York, Centre Pompidou, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. among many others. Kasten currently lives and works in Chicago, Illinois.