Allison Katz’s interest in framing as both motif and subtext is a formal technique that investigates subjective assumptions; the frame becomes a portal for making sense of the world.

For Katz, painting is an open, porous surface rooted equally in reality and the imagination. In ‘Venice Beach’ (2023) a yellow frame acts like a window to reveal a traditional view of Venice painted in the manner of a Canaletto veduta. Katz took this snapshot herself in Spring 2022 and painted it the following year while preparing for her current exhibition in Los Angeles, home to the neighborhood called Venice. Within the inner frame of the painting, her signature is scrawled upside down in a trompe-l'œil manner implying that the name has been written in sand. This play on perception is continued in the outer border of the painting, where Katz mixes real sand into the paint to further contrast the illusionism of a picture with actual matter. As the artist has written, she is ‘capturing the impermanent gesture of writing in the sand with the permanent gesture of oil paint.’