Barbara Kasten / Stages 

by Liz Deschenes (Author), Alex Kitnick (Author), Jenni Sorkin (Author), Alex Klein (Editor)

Since the 1970s, Chicago-based artist Barbara Kasten (born 1936) has developed her expansive practice of photography through the lens of many disciplines, including sculpture, painting, theater, textile and installation. Spanning her nearly five-decade engagement with abstraction, light and architectonic form, this publication situates Kasten's practice within current conversations around sculpture and photography.Kasten was one of the first artists to be invited by Polaroid to use its new large-format film, and it was with this that she made many of her best-known works. In the mid-1980s she stepped out of the studio and began working with large architectural spaces that were symbolic of both economic and cultural capital."Barbara Kasten: Stages" is the first major survey of her work. The publication includes a biography of the artist, a conversation between Kasten and artist Liz Deschenes, and new essays by curator Alex Klein, and art historians Alex Kitnick and Jenni Sorkin.

About the artist: Barbara Kasten was born in Chicago in 1936. She makes photographs and video projections in her studio that evoke an experience of movement through modernist architecture. While abstract, her work is subversively political, asking viewers to fundamentally question their perceptions. Trained as a sculptor, Kasten began to investigate photography through cyanotypes of fabrics and photograms of objects placed directly on the paper. See more of Barbara's work on her website here and click here for an Art21 documentary about her and her work.