Beth Katleman

Beth Katleman’s sculptures and installations evoke a world of luxury and genteel pleasure, but a closer look reveals a more subversive agenda. She creates allegories drawn from pop culture, fairy tales, and classic literature. As she casts found objects in porcelain and arranges them into ornate tableaus, strange tales emerge, often touching on themes of lost innocence or domestic disturbances. Porcelain suggests both the opulence of European high craft and the exuberance of kitsch souvenirs. The narratives flow from this duality, poised between consumption and desire.

She is represented in many public and private collections in the US and abroad, including the M.H. de Young Museum, San Francisco, California; RISD Museum, Providence, Rhode Island; the Ci Kim Arario Gallery Collection, Seoul, South Korea; the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin; Right Management, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and the Archie Bray Foundation, Helena, Montana; among others. Katleman received the 2011 Moet Hennessey Prize for the best decorative art object at PAD, New York; a Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation grant; the Watershed Generation X Award; and a residency in Cortona, Italy, sponsored by the University of Georgia, Athens.

Her sculptures have been exhibited internationally in art fairs such as Art Miami, Design Miami, Design Miami/Basel, and PAD Fairs in London, Paris, and New York. Her work has also been shown in museums including the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; Museum of Arts and Design, New York; the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco; and the M.L. de Young Museum, San Francisco, among others.

Katleman has garnered critical attention in La Tribune e Moi, Paris; The Art Newspaper, Basel; Grand Design Magazine, Shanghai; Cacao Magazine, Taiwan; and in the US in New York Times, The Art Economist, American Ceramics, Ceramics Art and Perception, and Sculpture Magazine, and in numerous other publications. In 2013, Katleman was profiled by Nicole Swengley in The Financial Times How to Spend It Magazine. Her installations Folly and Girls at War were the subjects of a full-color monograph by Todd Merrill in 2011. She holds a BA in English from Stanford University, an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, and an MBA in arts management from UCLA. Born in Park Forest, Illinois, Katleman lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.