Was it a cat i saw
Olympia, NYC

A palindrome appears the same forwards and backwards, and yet, it is only the letters that are duplicated. The exact assemblage of letters in reverse—broken up by different spacing—creates entirely different sounds and meanings across its hinge. A palindrome is a set of letters that reaches a moment in the center when the words seem to slip “through the looking-glass,” to use Lewis Carroll’s phrase, and emerge on the other side both like and unlike. What does it mean to move close to the mirror, to the point where the reflection reverses—and then, there you are—on the other side, seeing yourself multiple?

Catalina Schliebener Muñoz’s new exhibition at Olympia, was it a cat i saw, is a voyage through the looking-glass: a mirrored, dystopian funland, a carnivalesque house of distortions. Composed of one large-scale mural with four pieces titled Coloring Book and an alphabet-like set of collages titled Puzzle (Alphabet #1), the show continues the artist’s reckoning with childhood—a dismembering and re-composition process that has fueled a constant flow of exhibitions in recent years, from the Mattress Factory to the Queens Museum. The collages, murals, and diptychs shown here provide a window into explorations of infancy, Disney iconography, immaturity, sexuality, embodiment, and transness.

In Coloring Book, three palindromic diptychs of deconstructed Disney secondary characters—Minnie, Clarabelle Cow, and Figaro—alongside a single work focused on Goofy, anchor the mural with vinyl cutouts splayed across its surface, tumbling in two overlapping tones. The vinyls used in the mural are made from repurposed materials originally produced in Argentina for a show inspired by Keith Haring’s Once Upon A Time installation in the bathroom at the LGBT Center in Manhattan. Indefinitely postponed, the materials find new life here—another break in time that produces something else on the other side. A mirror as rupture, a new beginning. Bits of clothing and body parts become gestures toward something else, repeating familiar iconography while simultaneously undercutting its definitions.

In Puzzle Series, the artist has created 26 reveries, each an experiment within a constrained set of materials (puzzle pieces, graphite, and paper cutouts) and time (nine minutes initially for each piece). The use of puzzle pieces in these works means the puzzle will never be put back together. The complete image is inaccessible, unmade; it cannot be reassembled. The story remains untold. How do we pick up the pieces? How do we make a new alphabet? A new language in the aftermath of rupture?

Written by JD Pluecker