Los Angeles-based photographer and ceramic artist Catherine Opie shifts from the flesh-and-blood frankness of her iconic self-portraits to the hushed vastness of northern landscapes in Holding Blue, presented at Regen Projects from May 28July 3, 2026. Opiewho identifies as a leather dyke, lesbian cowboy, an elder, and Mama Cathy, with a mustachioed male alter-ego named Bois the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Endowed Chair in Art and Professor of Photography at UCLA. Her honors include the Smithsonians Archives of American Art Medal (2016) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2019).
From incision to emptiness
Opies late-1990s self-portraits put her own body squarely in the frame. In Self Portrait/Cutting (1993), a scene of two skirted stick figures before a small house is incised into her back; in Self Portrait/Pervert (1994), the word pervert is carved across her chest while rows of hypodermic needles bristle along her arms beneath a blackout leather bondage mask. She has called that image her Henry VIII moment, a stance that nods to Hans Holbein the Younger. The scars remain visible in Self Portrait/Nursing, where she holds her infant son, a tattooed Viking/Celtic band circling her right biceps. Her appetite for emptied-out scenes surfaced early, tooin the car- and people-free Freeways (19941995) and a 2001 series of a ghostly Wall Streetand her radical investigations have included photographing every depiction of blood on view in the Vatican, works often shown with trigger warnings. She has joked in interviews that she once planned to be a kindergarten teacher.
Blued by the mountains
Drawn by memories of Lake Eries haze, Opie spent the first two months of 2024 driving along the base of Norways mountains in search of the blue hour. The photographs in Holding Blue are grouped as Clich and Vernacular. A large-format Clich titled Munch sky swirls purple and amber; smaller Vernacular pictures catch a lone figure at an SUV, a single horse, snow-dusted houses, and the timber staves of an old church capped with dragon finials. There are piles of shoveled snow and a grocery stall laid out with traditional flatbread and Arnoldp lsa, a liver-based cured sausage. The Norwegian term Bergtatt literally means mountain-taken effect, an enchantment that these huge, cerulean-blue prints channel while remaining entirely faithful to camera originals, without alteration. Works from 2024 such as Circle of Ice and Blue Night (Vernacular) extend this wintry attention, and Opie has also addressed mountains in small ceramic renderings. If Im just the angry lesbian yelling at you, thats not going to really do anything because thats exactly whats happening within the MAGA movement, Opie told DAZED (March 4, 2026), framing an empathic approach that suits the shows contemplative mood.
Catherine Opie: Holding Blue
Regen Projects, 6750 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90038
May 28July 3, 2026; TuesdaySaturday, 10 a.m.6 p.m.
Vía artandcakela.com
