{"id":3364,"date":"2026-09-17T19:23:28","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T19:23:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/catherine-opies-holding-blue-finds-quiet-awe-in-norways-bergtatt\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T19:23:28","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T19:23:28","slug":"catherine-opies-holding-blue-finds-quiet-awe-in-norways-bergtatt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/catherine-opies-holding-blue-finds-quiet-awe-in-norways-bergtatt\/","title":{"rendered":"Catherine Opie\u0019s Holding Blue finds quiet awe in Norway\u0019s \u001aBergtatt\u0019"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/em>, presented at Regen Projects from May 28\u0013July 3, 2026. Opie\u0019who identifies as a leather dyke, lesbian cowboy, an elder, and \u001cMama Cathy,\u001d with a mustachioed male alter-ego named Bo\u0019is the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Endowed Chair in Art and Professor of Photography at UCLA. Her honors include the Smithsonian\u0019s Archives of American Art Medal (2016) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2019).<\/p>\n

From incision to emptiness<\/h2>\n

Opie\u0019s late-1990s self-portraits put her own body squarely in the frame. In Self Portrait\/Cutting<\/em> (1993), a scene of two skirted stick figures before a small house is incised into her back; in Self Portrait\/Pervert<\/em> (1994), the word \u001cpervert\u001d 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 \u001cHenry VIII moment,\u001d a stance that nods to Hans Holbein the Younger. The scars remain visible in Self Portrait\/Nursing<\/em>, where she holds her infant son, a tattooed Viking\/Celtic band circling her right biceps. Her appetite for emptied-out scenes surfaced early, too\u0019in the car- and people-free Freeways<\/em> (1994\u00131995) and a 2001 series of a ghostly Wall Street\u0019and 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.<\/p>\n

Blued by the mountains<\/h2>\n

Drawn by memories of Lake Erie\u0019s haze, Opie spent the first two months of 2024 driving along the base of Norway\u0019s mountains in search of the blue hour. The photographs in Holding Blue<\/em> are grouped as \u001cClich\u0013\u001d and \u001cVernacular.\u001d A large-format \u001cClich\u0013\u001d titled \u001cMunch sky\u001d swirls purple and amber; smaller \u001cVernacular\u001d 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\u0000lsa, a liver-based cured sausage. The Norwegian term \u001cBergtatt\u001d literally means \u001cmountain-taken effect,\u001d 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<\/em> and Blue Night (Vernacular)<\/em> extend this wintry attention, and Opie has also addressed mountains in small ceramic renderings. \u001cIf I\u0019m just the angry lesbian yelling at you, that\u0019s not going to really do anything because that\u0019s exactly what\u0019s happening within the MAGA movement,\u001d Opie told DAZED<\/em> (March 4, 2026), framing an empathic approach that suits the show\u0019s contemplative mood.<\/p>\n

Catherine Opie: Holding Blue<\/strong>
Regen Projects, 6750 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90038
May 28\u0013July 3, 2026; Tuesday\u0013Saturday, 10 a.m.\u00136 p.m.<\/p>\n

V\u00eda artandcakela.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Catherine Opie\u0019s Holding Blue at Regen Projects (May 28\u0013July 3, 2026) draws on a 2024 road trip along Norway\u0019s mountains, presenting cerulean, unaltered photographs grouped as \u001cClich\u0013\u001d and \u001cVernacular.\u001d The Los Angeles-based artist\u0019s trajectory from incisive self-portraits to emptied landscapes anchors this contemplative exhibition.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3363,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-happening-now"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}