- 48 Hester St, NYC 8/7-8/28 W-Sa 12-6pm
Arlo's Leaves, Untitled
by Kirsten Batten Leach
Technology holds an undercurrent of newness, something that hasn't been done before. While I can often be seduced by a narrative of progress, I want to remember that invention is a cycle, the endpoint of a test that occurred over and over again. If the finished product is what we see as technology, how do we keep a record of the first iterations of an idea and how does process become a part of the storyline? These two works encompass the residue of the ancient. I choose metal as my machine. In Untitled, you see a painting made of rust debris on canvas, two improbable materials resist each other, they are the archive of the making. Arlo's Leaves refers to the life cycles of trees. Autumn shedding lays out traces of a different point in the life cycle.
Kirsten Batten Leach
Kirsten Batten-Leach is an interdisciplinary artist who makes ephemeral sculptures, video and 2D works about care-taking and bodily autonomy. Her background as a ballet dancer and domestic worker informs the physical rigor of her object-making practice. Often drawing from these two polarized forms of labor, she critiques the effects of social stratification in the United States. In particular, examining power imbalances that occur as she navigates in a femme-presenting body and the subsequent impulses to conceal, collapse in on or control herself. She has exhibited works at NYU Gallatin Galleries, The Factory and Black Brick Project. This year, she is a recipient of the 2025-2026 A.I.R Fellowship and was a finalist for the 2025 Socrates Fellowship. Raised in Boston, she completed her MFA in Integrated Practices at Pratt Institute and earned a BFA in English Literature from Mount Holyoke College.